Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee's Union Cavalry in the Civil War

Homegrown Yankees k

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War james alex baggett

HOMEGROWN YANKEES

HOMEGROWN YANKEES k

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War

JAMES ALEX BAGGETT

Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge

Published by Louisiana State University Press Copyright © 2009 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing Designer: Tammi L. deGeneres Typeface: Marla, Whitman Typesetter: J. Jarrett Engineering, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baggett, James Alex. Homegrown Yankees : Tennessee’s Union cavalry in the Civil War / James Alex Baggett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8071-3398-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Tennessee—History—Civil War, Tennessee— History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. 3. Tennessee—History—Civil War, 1861–1865— Regimental histories. 4. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Cavalry operations. 5. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. 6. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. I. Title. E531.6.B34 2009 973.7′4768—dc22 2008041579

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. >

To Lillian

CONTENTS List of Illustratrions ~ ix Preface ~ xi Abbreviations ~ xiii Introduction: Context and Circumstances ~ 1 Part 1: Beginnings 1. The First Year ~ 21 2. Regiments in the Making ~ 40 3. Unready for Battle ~ 56 4. Between the Battles ~ 69 Part 2: Middle Tennessee and Beyond 5. Out of Murfreesboro ~ 87 6. The Chattanooga Campaign ~ 103 7. Into East Tennessee ~ 120 8. The Cumberlands ~ 138 9. Mounted Infantry ~ 149 Part 3: West Tennessee and Beyond 10. West Tennessee during 1863 ~ 167 11. Okolona ~ 181 12. Union City ~ 196 13. Fort Pillow ~ 211 Part 4: The Atlanta Campaign 14. North of Atlanta ~ 231 15. Two Cavalry Raids ~ 245

viii

Contents

16. Wheeler on the Railroads ~ 259 17. Forrest on the Railroads ~ 272 Part 5: The Nashville Campaign 18. North to Nashville ~ 289 19. The Battle of Nashville ~ 303 Part 6: East Tennessee and Beyond 20. Bulls Gap ~ 319 21. The Saltworks ~ 334 22. Stoneman’s Last Raid ~ 347 23. Final Months ~ 360 Conclusion ~ 374 Epilogue: Pride, Politics, and Pensions ~ 387 Appendix: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65 ~ 397 Bibliography ~ 407 Index ~ 425

ILLUSTRATIONS Maps Area of Operations for the Tennessee Union Cavalry ~ 18 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Kentucky and Virginia ~ 43 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in West Tennessee ~ 62 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Middle Tennessee ~ 89 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in East Tennessee ~ 123 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Mississippi ~ 185 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Georgia ~ 234 Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Alabama ~ 248 Portraits Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan ~ 19 Maj. Gen. George Crook ~ 85 Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman ~ 165 Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy ~ 229 Maj. Gen. James Harrison Wilson ~ 287 Maj. Gen. George Stoneman ~ 317 Following page 164 Regimental officers of the 1st Tennessee Union Cavalry Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem Col. William B. Stokes Col. James P. Brownlow Capt. Daniel Ellis Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan Lt. Gen. Joseph Wheeler Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

PREFACE

M

y interest in writing about the Civil War in Tennessee originated with my discovering its indelible impact upon the whole war in the West. To a lesser degree I am fascinated with the struggle there being “a true civil war” of neighbor against neighbor and occasionally brother against brother. Finally, I already had some familiarity with the state’s three grand divisions, since my wife, Lillian, and I resided in that beautiful state for more than two decades. I soon found that I could do more than write army headquarters’ history and have fun doing it by describing the lives of the eyes and ears of the infantry, the cavalry (whose war continued between the battles)—in this instance, Tennessee’s Union cavalry. Eventually I learned that these homegrown Yankees had a good story to tell, one all their own, an ever-changing tale that holds together based on the strategy of the opposing armies and regimental assignments. Like other often neglected groups of the recorded past, these once despised but now forgotten Tennesseans deserve a place in Civil War history. When I began researching the subject that I eventually decided to write about, I needed encouragement. Some of that encouragement came from a new friend named David Evans, whose scholarly, entertaining, and voluminous Sherman’s Horsemen stands as a model for describing Civil War cavalry. I appreciate the assistance provided early on by the staff at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. Senior archivist Marylin Bell Hughes and Darla Brock patiently guided me through the primary resources available there on my topic. At the McClung Historical Collection of the Knox County Public Library, director Steve Cotham and Sally Polhernus located some photographs included in my book. Around my home base of Metro Atlanta, Kathy Shoemaker of the Special Collections Department of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory Univer-

xii

Preface

sity, provided me with some rare regimental histories. Wendy Giminski of Research Media at the University of Georgia drew maps for the book, and Clay Proffitt of Buford assisted me with the work’s photographs. Others deserving my thanks include Judith Levy, interlibrary loan supervisor of the Gwinnett County Public Library System, who found difficult-to-locate regimental and county histories. Betty Shumard of the Sugar Hill Family History Center introduced me to multiple military records on microfilm. Adrian Mixson, director of the Hall County Public Library, and his staff at the Sybil Wood McRay Genealogy and Local History Collection in Gainesville facilitated my use of genealogical resources, which proved most valuable. Louisiana State University Press provided me with both in-house and out-ofhouse professionals. Senior Acquisitions Editor Rand Dotson guided me during the months of the manuscript’s consideration and Senior Editor George Roupe accompanied me on the route to publication. Along the way Todd Groce offered significant suggestions, and Kevin Brock edited the entire text, enhancing its clarity. My family, as always, encouraged me to dream. Jonathan Waller, more like a son to me than a nephew, rescued me when computer problems arose. My wife, Lillian Faulkner Baggett, as usual—this time while writing a novel of her own, Out of Eden: A Saga of the South—supported me as coresearcher, guardian of grammar and punctuation, lover, and best friend.

ABBREVIATIONS B&L BDAC BDTGA

CSR

CV ETHSP LC MOLLUS NA OR

ORN

ORS

PAJ

R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88) Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress Robert M. McBride and Dan M. Robinson, comps., Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly, vols. 1–2 (Nashville, 1975, 1979) Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from Southern States, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, NA Confederate Veteran East Tennessee Historical Society Publications Library of Congress Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States National Archives U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Record of the Union and Confederate Armies, ed. Robert N. Scott et al., 128 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901) [all citations are to series 1 unless specified otherwise] U.S. Navy Department, The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, 31 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1894–1927) Janet Jewett et al., eds., Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 100 vols. (Wilmington, N.C., 1994– 2001) [all citations are to part 3, Record of Events, unless specified otherwise] Andrew Johnson, The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. Leroy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul Bergeron, 16 vols. (Knoxville, 1967– 2000)

xiv

Abbreviations

RAGT RG SHSP TAGO TICW

TCWVQ

THQ TSLA UTL WTHSP

Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Tennessee on the Military Forces of the State from 1861 to 1866 (Nashville, 1866) Record Group Southern Historical Society Papers, 55 vols. (incl. 3 vol. index) (reprint, Wilmington, N.C., 1994) Tennessee Adjutant General’s Office Tennessee Civil War Centennial Commission, Tennesseans in the Civil War: A Military History of the Confederate and Union Units with Available Rosters of Personnel, 2 vols. (Nashville, 1964) Gustavus W. Dyer and John Trotwood Moore, comps., The Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, ed. Colleen Morse Elliott and Louise Armstrong Moxley, 5 vols. (Easley, S.C., 1985) Tennessee Historical Quarterly Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville University Archives and Special Collections, University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville West Tennessee Historical Society Papers

HOMEGROWN YANKEES

INTRODUCTION

Context and Circumstances

O

f all the states of the Confederacy, Tennessee was the most sectionally divided. East Tennesseans opposed secession at the ballot box in February 1861 and again in June, then in a show of solidarity through conventions in May at Knoxville and in June at Greeneville, where they petitioned for separate statehood. While the government in Nashville denied their request, the state sought East Tennesseans’ cooperation for months before seeking to impose its will—which it found almost impossible to accomplish in at least twenty-five counties. East Tennesseans resisted the Confederate government, enlisted in Union militias, elected U.S. congressmen, and fled as refugees into Kentucky. On the night of November 8, 1861, a select group of them burned five of the nine railroad bridges between Bristol and Chattanooga that they had targeted for destruction.1 East Tennesseans trudged over the Cumberland Mountains, some in sizable groups (including newly enlisted companies) and others in small squads to avoid patrols, all using guides they called “pilots,” often recruiters themselves. Upon reaching military posts in Kentucky—initially formed to organize and train that state’s loyal units—most joined the Union army. Five regiments of infantry and four of cavalry from Tennessee formed during 1861–62 in central Kentucky.2 During 1862 two infantry regiments and three of cavalry organized in Union-occupied Middle and West Tennessee. Additional units enlisted in cen1. Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History, 2nd ed. (Knoxville, 1981), 291, 294, 298; Noel C. Fisher, War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 42, 57, 65–69. 2. Fisher, War at Every Door, 65–68.

2

Introduction

tral Kentucky in early 1863 as well as in occupied East Tennessee during fall 1863. Stemming from the efforts of military governor Andrew Johnson—a former civil governor and U.S. senator—earlier that year to help rescue East Tennessee by recruiting northerners, two mixed cavalry regiments of Yankees and Tories enlisted at Nashville. One additional battalion later organized in West Tennessee. Johnson also created several regiments of one-year-enlistment mounted infantry during 1863–65 that operated in Middle and East Tennessee.3 Most Tennesseans denounced the state’s bluecoats as renegades, turncoats, and Tories. Many used designations with the words home and Yankees: home Yankees, homemade Yankees, homespun Yankees, and homegrown Yankees. Confederates deemed these wartime unionists lower than northern soldiers: they had betrayed their people, their section, and their race. Along with slaves turning on their masters, loyal Confederates found such men unfit to live among civilized southerners. Pvt. Adolphus Montague of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) described the “Home-Made Yankees [as being] composed of the roughest most good-for-nothing men who would not join the Confederates but waited for an opportunity to join the Federals that they might stay near home and pilfer the houses in the community as well as settle their grudges by attacking their personal enemies.”4 This book describes Tennessee’s Union cavalry: fourteen regiments that fought primarily within the boundaries of the state as well as eight local loyal mounted-infantry units. In a state that witnessed more fighting than any other except Virginia, Tennessee’s three-year cavalry enlistees fought in most of its campaigns after fall 1862: Stones River, Tullahoma, Chickamauga (the actual battle site in Georgia), East Tennessee, and Nashville; two regiments (1st and 4th Tennessee) also fought in the Atlanta Campaign. Beyond this these horsemen skirmished numerous times while scouting the countryside; defending railroads, bridges, and depots; and protecting unionists. They took the war to the enemy in raids and while riding on the infantry’s flanks. During the final stages of the war, they raided the enemy’s sources of supply in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina.5 3. TICW, 1:318–60. 4. Ibid.; Montague quoted in Robert R. Mackey, “The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Texas A&M University, 2000), 324n; B. Franklin Cooling, “A People’s War: Partisan Conflict in Tennessee and Kentucky,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville, Ark., 1999), 114. 5. TICW, 1:318–60; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636.

Context and Circumstances

3

Barely organized and inadequately armed, the Tory horsemen fought poorly in December 1862 at Murfreesboro and against Nathan Bedford Forrest during his first foray into West Tennessee. They successfully guarded the left flank of William S. Rosecrans’s army east of Murfreesboro during spring 1863 and that summer his right flank during the Tullahoma Campaign. They saw limited action at Chickamauga before pursuing Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry across most of Middle Tennessee afterward. During the East Tennessee and Atlanta campaigns, the 1st Tennessee, by then commanded by James P. Brownlow—a son of Knoxville publisher Parson William G. Brownlow—distinguished itself and gained national attention in the Union army’s crossing of the Chattahoochee River. Former sheriff Meshack Stephens’s 4th Tennessee lived up to Lovell H. Rousseau’s expectations during his raid through Alabama into Georgia. Through no fault of their own, both regiments found themselves nearly destroyed by Wheeler’s cavalry on Edward M. McCook’s ill-fated raid below Atlanta—an operation in which they fought gallantly to save themselves and others.6 Former congressman William B. Stokes’s often-criticized 5th Tennessee excelled as cavalry support for infantry and as guerrilla fighters in the foothills of the Cumberlands. When ably led, well equipped, and well mounted (as during the Nashville Campaign), the homegrown Yankee cavalry—especially Michigan schoolteacher George Spalding’s 12th Tennessee—more than held its own. Consequently Spalding and his men received the honor of leading the final pursuit of the enemy to the Tennessee River. The 8th and 13th Tennessee also helped George Stoneman accomplish his destructive raids into the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina during 1864–65.7 This previously untold story of Tennessee’s Union cavalry demonstrates that battles represent only a part of a larger mosaic—one crowded with deprivation, illness, waiting, and homesickness intermingled with the joys of comradeship and occasional good news. Militarily these horsemen guarded, scouted, escorted, foraged, skirmished, and engaged in battles. Much of this book describes what occurred between battles, looks at the lives of cavalrymen found on the periphery, explores the circumstances that limited their effectiveness, and details the war’s effect upon them. In addition, this study examines the backdrop of their story, the war from 1862 to 1865 in Tennessee. Issues of special interest include strategy, tactics, irregular warfare, and policy 6. TICW, 1:318; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636. 7. TICW, 1:318; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636.

4

Introduction

toward noncombatants. The concepts of other historians regarding such issues throughout the South will be compared to the state’s situation. The experiences of Tennessee’s homegrown Yankee cavalrymen can be classified as either directly related to frontline combat or in support of frontline units. Some of these noncombat duties included intelligence gathering through scouting and reconnoitering and logistical support (supplying the army) through guarding depots, escorting trains, and foraging the countryside. Other noncombat activities focused on regimental maintenance through recruiting, training, enforcing discipline, arming, and seeing to the care of men and horses, while others aimed at controlling, protecting, and pacifying civilians. Combat-related activities were either strategic or tactical in nature. Strategic operations aimed to achieve long-term objectives such as occupation of territory by defending a string of outposts or disruption of Confederate efforts through raids of systematic destruction into enemy territory. Others relating to immediate combat were tactical, or battlefield, movements that included advancing, screening, charging, demonstrating, flanking, leapfrogging, and pursuing. Since cavalry’s romantic and largely European development, improvements in infantry performance through the use of more accurate, longer-ranged rifles by the 1860s limited the horse soldier’s utility on the battlefield. Such reliable firepower eventually inspired multi-tiered battle lines and the use of hasty fieldworks. As the Civil War persisted, cavalrymen on both sides, who usually fought each other directly instead of infantrymen, acquired more of the newly developed breech-loading repeating rifles. Also, in the South wooded land, fenced fields, and mountainous terrain forced cavalrymen to fight on or near roadways. Added to these challenges were an abundance of “broken down” horses and “uncertain horsemanship” among the volunteers. Supposedly these realities converted cavalry into little more than mounted infantry, soldiers using their horses only for transportation and their sabers for ornamentation.8 But, as the Confederates proved during 1861–62, altered circumstances did 8. Archer Jones, Civil War Command and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat (New York, 1992), 27, 134; Stephen Z. Starr, “Cold Steel: The Saber and the Union Cavalry,” in Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, ed. John T. Hubbell (Westport, Conn, 1975), 118–19; Edward Hagerman, The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command (Bloomington, Ind., 1988), 218; Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (New York, 2003), 286, 297–300, 309.

Context and Circumstances

5

not immediately precipitate the cavalry’s demise. Only cavalry could provide rapid reconnaissance, expeditiously raid behind enemy lines, and outfox and outrun retreating infantry. With the advent of the carbine—“a shorter and lighter rifle”—and the mountain howitzer, the Civil War simultaneously became the cavalry’s heyday and its last hurrah. An overwhelming preponderance of the Tory horse soldier’s combat occurred after he dismounted and every fourth rider became a horse holder. But other fighting—best described as the actions of cavalry—involved saber charges, countercharges, pursuit, and firefights with both sides mounted. While the days of the saber charge waned, the steel blade had its defenders, though mostly because of their training or experience. Such men believed in the saber’s esprit de corps tradition, its shock value as a tactical weapon, and surprisingly its occasional results in winning an engagement.9 After realizing that they could not win the war, and would not lose the war, on the fate of big battles and that they needed to occupy some of the South but could not occupy it all, northern leaders adopted what historian William L. Barney called an “enclave strategy.” When the Confederacy lost the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, the Union gained access to a Mid-South corridor by way of Kentucky. The Federals initially established two enclaves in Tennessee: one through Middle Tennessee and the other through West Tennessee and beyond into Mississippi. Eventually another would exist from Chattanooga to Knoxville. These enclaves provided bases for establishing a “defensive perimeter,” for fighting “further campaigns,” for controlling “contiguous territory,” and for waging “disruptive raids” against the enemy. For the most part, homegrown Yankee cavalrymen spent their time in protecting these holdings, especially the lines of communication that made them possible. But these enclaves were not even close to being solidly occupied by Union forces, and outside of a few garrisoned towns, they represented territory of only “quasi-Union control.”10 After Shiloh in April 1862, “a new military landscape emerged” in Tennessee, one generated by public hostility toward occupation and Confederate support for irregular warfare consisting of guerrilla bands, roaming partisan cav9. Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible, 292, 487–88, 492–94; Cooling, “People’s War,” 119; David Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign (Bloomington, Ind., 1996), 477; Starr, “Cold Steel,” 115–18, 121–24. 10. William L. Barney, Flawed Victory: A New Perspective on the Civil War (New York, 1975), 33–36.

6

Introduction

alry, and mounted raiders. Union forces occupied and fortified only select towns and railroad crossings, scattering their strength too much to prevent mounted raids. Federals faced extensive territory, guarded long supply lines, and lacked the numbers to win “a decisive victory.” Of necessity they garrisoned towns along the railroads south of Nashville and east of Memphis after failing to defend the railroads through West Tennessee. Although these outposts encouraged trade and taking the loyalty oath among locals, along with refugees and merchants, they attracted camp followers such as saloon operators, gamblers, and prostitutes. All of these groups contained a few spies and smugglers helping support guerrillas and other Confederate irregulars with goods and Rebel army regulars with information on the strength and movements of Union troops. These outposts and depots—containing quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance supplies—were also desirable targets for enemy cavalry raids.11 From these garrisoned towns, Federal commanders dispatched mounted detachments to scout and forage in a difficult to defend “no-man’s land” of quasi-Union authority. Occasionally they struck at the camps of mounted raiders—bushwhackers, guerrillas, partisans, independent regulars, or an amalgamation thereof. Less often commanders ordered large detachments of infantry and cavalry into the loosely controlled “Confederate frontier.” Stokes’s 5th Tennessee provided the advance for several mixed forces east of Murfreesboro during the first half of 1863, resulting in successful engagements at Brady ville, Snows Hill, and McMinnville. Beyond this, any direct attack on “the Confederate interior” required even larger, mostly mounted forces, such as those by Abel D. Streight into Alabama in spring 1863, William Sooy Smith into Mississippi in winter 1864, and George Stoneman into Virginia in fall 1864 and into North Carolina in spring 1865, raids that included companies from six different Tennessee regiments.12 The state’s blueclad horsemen devoted most of their time to guarding railroads. Especially important were lines south of Nashville: the Nashville & Chattanooga and the Nashville & Decatur. Other routes guarded included the Memphis & Charleston to Decatur, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Nashville & Northwestern, completed in 1864 to transport supplies from the Tennes11. Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill, 1995), 76–107; OR, 32 (1):508–9, 32(3):234–35; Richard Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 183. 12. Ash, When the Yankees Came, 76–107; TICW, 1:318–60; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636.

Context and Circumstances

7

see River east to Nashville. Guarding railroads meant dividing a regiment into companies for months at a time to protect individual stations and bridges.13 The period of Tennessee’s Tory cavalry organization—mid-1861 to mid1865—can be divided in numerous ways. One is according to the changing Union strategy as presented by Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, from reliance on big battles (1861–62), to dependence on occupation (1862–63), to raiding the enemy’s resources (1864–65). Among useful models is one of Mark Grimsley, that of changing emphases of Federal war policy toward southern civilians from one of “reconciliation” until mid-1862, to “a pragmatic interlude” until spring 1863, to a “hard war policy” thereafter. From the perspective of Benjamin F. Cooling, the process from February 1862 was a legacy of the Union victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson—an outgrowth of forces set in motion by the Confederacy’s loss of the state’s major rivers. The results included partial occupation, irregular warfare, and the fight over the state’s railroads. Robert R. Mackey has argued that “the protection of . . . supply lines dictated the pace of the war more than success or failure on the battlefield.” He also concludes that the supply lines were “a conducive environment for irregular warfare.”14 Whatever the weaknesses of homegrown Yankee cavalry, they were magnified by the performance of such opponents as Joseph Wheeler, John Hunt Morgan, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, noted Rebel raiders often sent to cut Union lines of communication in Tennessee. Of Wheeler, Morgan, and Forrest and their men, William T. Sherman wrote: “The rascals are brave, fine riders and dangerous subjects. . . . They are the best cavalry in the world.” To a remarkable degree their presence caused the Union to create, retain, and almost continuously increase cavalry in the West, including the loyal Tennesseans.15 Although the “Great Raider” achieved success before 1863 in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky, Tories experienced better fortune with Morgan than with Forrest or Wheeler. The homespun bluecoats supported infantry opera13. TICW, 1:318–60. 14. Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York, 1995), 2–5, 162–63; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, 1983), 487–96; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville, 1997), xiii–xv; Robert R. Mackey, The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865 (Norman, Okla., 2004), 20. 15. Jones, Command and Strategy, 144–45, 151–52; Beringer et al., Why the South Lost, 169–71, 182–83.

8

Introduction

tions in early 1863 east of Murfreesboro that damaged Morgan’s division and his reputation. Along with others in July 1863, some pursued him across Ohio before participating in his capture. After Morgan’s escape and his appointment as commander of the Department of Southwest Virginia, the Tennesseans fought him again in 1864 in East Tennessee. During a surprise raid on Greeneville by a Tory brigade commanded by Alvan C. Gillem—a West Point graduate and regular-army man from Tennessee—Morgan was killed on September 4 by a trooper of the 13th Tennessee.16 The homegrown Yankees suffered many setbacks at the hands of young Wheeler, beginning in December 1862 with his exploit of circling enemy lines at Murfreesboro. But “Fightin’ Joe” fared less well on the defensive—at Shelbyville six months later when the Tennesseans forced him and others to swim the Duck River to escape capture. The Tories joined in the pursuit of Wheeler in fall 1863 after he destroyed wagon trains behind Union lines at Chattanooga. Following some initial victories, Wheeler experienced mixed results and heavy losses. In the “Great Raid” below Atlanta, “the War Child,” as Wheeler’s men called him, almost annihilated a cavalry expedition that included the 1st and 4th Tennessee when he blocked the Federals’ path of escape to the Chattahoochee River. But later that summer, when Wheeler raided the railroads in Middle Tennessee and allowed his column to scatter, the Tories and other Federals dealt his command blows from which it never fully recovered.17 Forrest almost always defeated homegrown Yankees, as he did everyone else. The “Wizard of the Saddle” was a greater cavalry leader than any the Union army had to offer. On most occasions he outnumbered the Tennessee bluecoats and often possessed artillery when they did not. He captured the 7th Tennessee twice: first, while the regiment was part of a larger command at Trenton in 1862, then at Union City by itself in spring 1864 while being commanded by its colonel, Isaac R. Hawkins. During winter 1864, Forrest defeated William Sooy Smith’s raiders—which included a brigade of Tennesseans—at Okolona, Mississippi. That spring while raiding West Tennessee, he panicked 16. F. W. Weatherbee Jr., Reports, Correspondence, and Miscellaneous Records Concerning the 5th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, U.S.A. (Montgomery, Ala., 1992), 10–24; Basil W. Duke, A History of Morgan’s Cavalry (Cincinnati, 1867), 375–87, 396; TICW, 1:352; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 247–48. 17. TICW, 1:319, 320, 322, 323, 328; Mark Mayo Boatner III, Civil War Dictionary (New York, 1959), 910–11.

Context and Circumstances

9

and slaughtered members of William F. Bradford’s vastly outnumbered battalion at Fort Pillow, along with the garrison’s black troops. Later that year he captured all except a small number of the surprisingly hard-fighting 3rd Tennessee at Sulphur Branch trestle north of Athens, Alabama. Virtually the only time homegrown Yankees found satisfaction against Forrest—even then with mixed results—was in pursuing him into Alabama as his command served as John B. Hood’s rearguard following the Battle of Nashville.18 The emergence of irregular warfare in Kentucky and Tennessee shaped the conditions under which loyal Volunteer State cavalry fought. Recruiting of Tory cavalry from summer 1862 to December 1863 paralleled the period when Confederates—desperate to regain lost territory—counterattacked with partisans, guerrillas, and mounted raids as soldiers began returning home from battlefield defeats, especially Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh. The Army of Tennessee crossed the state three times, leaving in its wake hundreds of stragglers, deserters, short-term enlistees, and officers recruiting to fill depleted commands. Circumstances throughout the remainder of the war forced both sides to contend for control and/or occupation with irregulars as well as regulars. Conditions causing these parallel wars included an available Tory population to help counter insurgency, rough and mountainous terrain providing irregulars with relatively “safe havens,” and a supply system dependent on railroads, which provided irregulars with meaningful targets.19 When Nashville fell in late February 1862, Jack Claiborne of Terry’s Texas Rangers claimed Tennesseans in the army were “greatly dissatisfied at the loss of their capital.” As they retreated with other Confederates toward Corinth, “not a few quit the ranks” because of having to leave “their homes, families, [and] kindred . . . behind.” Others followed suit after Shiloh. Many who returned home later waged war by means that involved riding rather than walking. They joined independent partisans operating under authority from Richmond and guerrilla bands—self-appointed, unregulated, self-supported squads—both often backing regular forces and their aims. But out of their 18. TICW, 1:326, 333–38; W. R. Carter, History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Great War of the Rebellion, with the Armies of the Ohio and Cumberland, under Generals Morgan, Rosecrans, Thomas, Stanley, and Wilson, 1862–1865 (Knoxville, 1902), 233–34; John W. Andes and Will A. McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers: The Second and Third Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Civil War, Reminiscences of Lieutenant John W. Andes and Major Will A. McTeer, ed. Charles S. McCammon (Maryville, Tenn., 1922), 218. 19. Cooling, “People’s War,” 118–24; Mackey, Uncivil War, 1, 10, 20.

10

Introduction

need to survive and thrive, irregulars developed their own agenda as well. Increasingly during 1864 and 1865, their goals included power, property, and revenge.20 Many of the findings of this work regarding irregular warfare in Tennessee— often “treated as an aberration”—coincide with the conclusions of Robert Mackey, including that “the war of ambush and raid, isolated blockhouse, and burned home exemplified the Civil War to many people.” Mackey finds that it emerged with enemy occupation and continued as “an adjunct to the conventional field armies” of the Confederacy, its primary purpose being to disrupt the Union army’s lines of communication. Unlike insurgents of the next century, Civil War irregulars—partisans, guerrillas, and cavalry raiders—lacked a unifying ideology and sought to protect rather than overthrow the Confederate status quo. But ultimately the Union army won this war as well as the conventional contest between regular armies because of “inventiveness, superior organization and logistical support, and the use of pro-Union Southerners” such as Tennessee’s Union cavalry (and to a degree because of the abuses of guerrillas against their own noncombatants).21 The Federal army’s aims and those of Governor Johnson’s provisional government often worked at cross-purposes. Loyal Tennesseans enlisted primarily to protect their own region from the Rebels. This can clearly be seen in East Tennessee, where unionists represented a majority, but much the same can be said for the 5th Tennessee in the Cumberlands and for the 6th and 7th Tennessee Cavalry in the Tennessee River counties of West Tennessee; it was entirely the case with mounted infantry, which generally operated close to home. Tennessee regiments accompanying George W. Morgan to Ohio in summer 1862—including the first four cavalry regiments—became furious when ordered to West Virginia. After all, they had entered the army to redeem their section of their state. Governor Johnson saw them as having been recruited first to save their section from the state, then the state from the Confederacy, and only then to help save the Union.22 Commanders such as Don Carlos Buell, William S. Rosecrans, and William T. 20. Jones, Command and Strategy, 150; Ash, When the Yankees Came, 47–49, 64–67; Sutherland, “Introduction,” Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 10–11; Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (New York, 1928), 136; Claiborne quoted in Andrew Ward, River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (New York, 2005), 97; Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible, 324–25. 21. Mackey, Uncivil War, 1–23. 22. Alexander Eckel, History of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A., War of the Rebellion, 1861–

Context and Circumstances

11

Sherman considered the use of loyal state regiments, like all others, only for the good of the army’s operations. But Johnson and his cavalry commanders saw a special purpose for such units: to defend their own communities and to assist the unionists in them. The generals, other than for George H. Thomas on occasion, opposed independent operations proposed by the governor. In 1864, when James Harrison Wilson tried to concentrate Tennessee’s cavalry— then in one division—with other cavalry into a unified command, Johnson objected.23 Disagreements over the proper utilization of cavalry also affected the state’s Union horsemen. Some generals, such as Rosecrans, saw cavalry’s primary purpose as assisting infantry. In battle this meant covering the infantry’s flanks and rear and conducting occasional raids on enemy supply lines. Thomas and Wilson, his cavalry chief late in the war, used the cavalry as an instrument also for strikes behind enemy lines during a battle and for pursuit. If cavalry could be concentrated, well led, well trained, well armed, and well mounted— as proved at the Battle of Nashville—then in partnership with infantry it could bring total victory. Unfortunately for the Tories, neither this policy nor the circumstances that made it applicable prevailed until late 1864.24 Their inability to acquire horses, equipment, and weapons also determined the fate of the state’s blue horsemen. The men were not fully mounted and equipped as cavalry before at least the middle of 1863. Although recruited in summer 1862, Isaac Hawkins’s 7th Tennessee, according to him, still lacked “arms, horses & horse equipments” in November. His equine equipment included “two saddles 14 halters & less than half a dozen bridles.” Writing about the condition of his regiment in Kentucky in fall 1862, Adj. Will McTeer of the 3rd Tennessee stated, “Some had a saddle and no bridle, while others had bridles and no saddles.”25 Their inability to acquire adequate quotas of horses plagued the Federals 1865 (Knoxville, 1929), 22; Fielding Hurst to Andrew Johnson, Apr. 29, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA. 23. Clifton Hall, Andrew Johnson: Military Governor of Tennessee (Princeton, 1916), 176–80; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, Etc., 2 vols. (New York, 1912), 2:103. 24. David Sloane Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major General D. S. Stanley, U.S.A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1917), 132; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 7, 16, 20, 107. 25. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 29; Hawkins to Johnson, Nov. 29, 1862, PAJ, 6:76–77.

12

Introduction

throughout the war. In 1861 the lack of cavalry mounts had to do with the high cost of equipping a cavalryman compared to equipping an infantryman. When enough horses could not be acquired from the Union army quartermaster, the War Department advised Governor Johnson to seize civilian horses. This directive had its limitations, for Confederates operating behind Union lines were busily helping themselves to these animals. Often the quality of impressed horses did not meet army standards, which meant that the animals would soon have to be discarded. At any one time many of Tennessee’s blueclad cavalrymen were unmounted. Typically they were the last to get horses and on occasion had their own mounts taken from them to supply the needs of another regiment. Future congressman Jacob M. Thornburgh, whose brigade had been scattered to several different posts and stripped of horses and mules for nonTennesseans in Rousseau’s raid into Alabama, wrote in July 1864 that he could not “remain quiet.” He reported that his brigade had been “placed in a condition that [could] do little service—reflect little credit to the State—& then on account of the disability [would] be stigmatized ‘Cowardly Tennesseans.’ ”26 When they enlisted Tennessee cavalrymen received muskets, including Belgian and Austrian models purchased abroad by the U.S. government because of a shortage at home. These long-barreled weapons, of course, could not be easily loaded and fired from a horse. As late as November 1862, the first four regiments remained armed with muskets. Once these unionists did obtain arms appropriate for cavalrymen, they received a variety of arms requiring different types of ammunition, even within the same regiment. Even those commands recruited during fall 1863 in East Tennessee experienced these same issues.27 The nature of establishing volunteer regiments—which worked so well for recruiting— later often worked to the unit’s detriment. Raising a regiment began with the authority of Military Governor Johnson to commission a commanding officer, usually with the rank of colonel. Altogether, from 1862 to 1864, he commissioned about twenty men to raise cavalry regiments, about a quarter of whom failed to enlist enough men. These appointees received commissions primarily because of their political or family connections, which gave them some promise of attracting recruits. In several cases such officers—the overwhelming majority without any military experience—had to be replaced 26. PAJ, vols. 5–6; Thornburgh to Johnson, July 21, 1864, ibid., 7:46; Stephen Z. Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, 3 vols. (Baton Rouge, 1979, 1981, 1985), 1:66. 27. Carter, First Regiment, 60; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 25, 38; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 16, 24; Starr, Union Cavalry, 1:153–54; TICW, 1:334; Mackey, “Uncivil War,” 342.

Context and Circumstances

13

once the training or the fighting began. Many of the regiments recruited as officers either regular-army enlisted men from other states or officers from other state regiments primarily to help train the men.28 In a regiment that elected its own officers, a rather casual attitude existed. The units encompassed heavy concentrations of men from the same areas of the state, friends and leaders known from their youth. Cavalrymen from Middle Tennessee hailed mainly from DeKalb, Bedford, and adjoining counties. West Tennessee volunteers for the most part resided in a handful of counties near the Tennessee River, such as McNairy, Henderson, and Carroll. Officers often were reluctant to drill, discipline, or punish their troops. They knew, as was proven when recruiting, that their constituency would continue beyond the term of military service. On occasion officers could even aid enemy soldiers who had befriended them. Confederate cavalry captain Reuben G. Clark recalled that while newly captured in October 1864, Col. Joseph Parsons of the 9th Tennessee saved him from a revenge-seeking enemy officer with an “uplifted sword,” saying to his attacker, “You might be a prisoner yourself someday!” Seizing an opportunity to further bolster Parsons’s sympathy, Clark, whose brother once backed the colonel for a congressional seat, lied that he had supported him as well. Consequently Parsons ordered that his “friend” be escorted to Morristown to collect any items he needed and to eat “dinner among friends” before being taken to Knoxville with other prisoners.29 As their friends liked to believe, many abuses perpetrated by homegrown Yankees sprang from the desire for revenge because of earlier persecution by secessionist neighbors and officials, resistance to them by occupied noncombatants, and attacks by irregulars. But this misconduct also derived from a lack of discipline, the prevailing eye-for-an-eye attitude, and the greed of a lower class toward their betters. In most instances it reflected an absence of outside restraints, often lacking among isolated cavalry detachments. Still, irregular warfare helped shape the Tories’ treatment of civilians as well as of enemy guerrillas. And when guerrillas, such as Champ Ferguson in the Cumberlands, offered no quarter to their personal enemies and Union regulars, it was reciprocated. Tory abuses often ran hand in hand with the demands of Union commanders to satisfy their armies’ needs for food, fodder, and horses. In28. PAJ, vols. 5–6. 29. Starr, Union Cavalry, 1:153–54; TICW, 1:318–60; Reuben G. Clark, Valley of the Shadow: The Memoir of Confederate Captain Reuben G. Clark, Company I, 59th Tennessee Mounted Infantry, ed. Willene B. Clark (Knoxville, 1994), 51–52.

14

Introduction

creasingly as the war continued, the unionist regiments destroyed property to prevent its being used by the enemy. Occasional abuses stemmed from mixed signals from high-ranking officers. On a march through Kentucky to Ohio in 1862, George W. Morgan forbade the 2nd Tennessee’s starving troopers from foraging a farmer’s turkeys, but by 1863 David S. Stanley would order the burning of the houses of suspected guerrillas, and the following year during a raid into Mississippi, William Sooy Smith would have the Tennesseans burn everything but the houses.30 Because of the democratic nature of the military and American society, and in turn its volunteer state regiment, soldiers on both sides were often undisciplined. Cavalrymen proved more undisciplined than infantrymen, probably because of having less regimentation, with perhaps East Tennessee and Kentucky horsemen the most undisciplined soldiers in both armies. Will McTeer of the 3rd Tennessee (USA) claimed that East Tennesseans “made good fighters” but when away from the battlefield often disregarded “the red tape of strict military discipline.” He found this to be “so universally true that some . . . officers made allowances.” One officer phrased it this way: “I require soldiers from other sections to take off their caps when they come into my offices, but East Tennesseans consider it a disgrace to do so, and I require them to keep theirs on!”31 Homegrown Yankees—both enlisted men and officers—encountered far more trouble with their superiors and civilian officials over unauthorized foraging than any other matter. Since time immemorial soldiers have foraged for foodstuffs, fodder, and horses, and during the American Civil War, neither side proved to be an exception. Most often cavalry, assisted by wagoners and infantry, had responsibility for regular foraging. Rosecrans set the policy in Middle Tennessee by requiring authorization for foraging only at the division level, issuance of reimbursement vouchers for unionists and receipts for 30. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 30–31; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:383–84; John W. Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen: Through the Civil War with the Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry (Knoxville, 1971), 139; Suzanne Colton Wilson, comp., Column South: With the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry from Antietam to the Capture of Jefferson Davis, ed. J. Ferrel Colton and Antoinette G. Smith (Flagstaff, 1960), 293–94; Stella Mowbray Harvey, comp., Tales of the Civil War Era (Crossville, Tenn., 1977), 50–51; Noel C. Fisher, “Definitions of Victory: East Tennessee Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction,” in Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 107–8; James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York, 1996), 78–85; R. W. Johnson, A Soldier’s Reminiscences in Peace and War (Philadelphia, 1886), 196–97. 31. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 238–39.

Context and Circumstances

15

all others, and discharges for officers ignoring the rules. Foraging often proved to be far more informal when engaged in by a squad of cavalry seeking a meal. Legal problems arose when horsemen on their own stole personal property, vandalized households, and abused occupants.32 Incidents of irregular foraging by Tory cavalry occurred throughout the war, ranging from cases about livestock and turkeys in 1862 to those about wine and watches in 1865. The practice reached its peak in the Cumberlands, where both sides foraged for furniture. Some violations of policy were based on class, for instance, when poorer homegrown Yankees had an opportunity to steal from richer Rebels. Other violations grew out of revenge for losses or mistreatment. In the last year of the war, the low moral ground set by the Union army of destroying private property so it could not fall into the hands of the enemy, albeit a successful policy, added to the ambiguity between authorized and unauthorized foraging.33 Of the circumstances encountered by the homegrown Yankee, the most significant was his life as a refugee soldier away from his family, whose members faced a hostile environment. He left his kin to protect them from what he believed to be an oppressive government representing primarily the interest of slaveholders or (later) to avoid conscription into the Rebel army. As with refugees everywhere, he found his own, often before he ever fled, and united with them in common purposes. He maintained a line of communication with his family, sharing in their suffering and hoping to reap vengeance on their persecutors. He shared his salary as well as any ill-gotten gains. Being most often one to three days’ riding distance from home, he occasionally was absent without leave.34 This work will also examine Tennessee Tory cavalrymen and their offi32. Dorothy Denneen Volo and James M. Volo, Daily Life in Civil War America (Westport, Conn., 1998), 122–24; Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 101–2. 33. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 30–31; John A. Pitts, Personal and Professional Reminiscences of an Old Lawyer (Kingsport, Tenn., 1930), 189–90; Mrs. James W. Wilkinson to Mrs. D. E. Huger, May 16, 1865, in Mason Smith Family Letters, ed. Hugh Smith et al. (Columbia, 1950), 208; Fanny Atkisson to Mrs. Ambrose Buber, May 18, 1865, in Athens, 1861–1865: As Seen through Letters in the University of Georgia Libraries, ed. Kenneth Coleman (Athens, Ga., 1969), 116–17; Cornelia Phillips Spencer, The Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina (New York, 1866), 224. 34. Richard N. Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy (Boston, 1992), 32; Daniel Ellis, Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis, the Great Union Guide of East Tennessee for a Period of Nearly Four Years, Written by Himself (New York, 1867), 26, 45, 65, 206–7, 234–35, 255, 257.

16

Introduction

cers: who were they, why did they join the Union army, and how did they differ from their counterparts in the Confederate army? Union officers from East Tennessee will be compared with W. Todd Groce’s findings about the origins of Confederate officers from that section. Groce discovered that the gray regimental and company officers of 1861—colonels, majors, and captains—had for the most part dwelled in towns near “a major transportation route,” especially near the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, and were young men who derived mostly from “a rising commercial professional middle class” with business ties to the Lower South and political links to the state’s Democratic Party.35 Regarding the state’s Union troopers overall, some categories—such as nativity, age, occupation, and religion—will largely be ignored because the small difference between the two sides was obvious or insignificant: that is, a great majority of both were southern born, very young adults, farmers or farmhands, and Protestants, mostly Methodists and Baptists. Other more useful categories with implications can be divided under three questions: what were the prewar circumstances of their lives, how did they react politically to events preceding the war, and how did they react to authority affecting them individually during the war. Special attention shall be paid to the men’s reaction to such issues as Confederate conscription, impressment, morale, and desertion; Union emancipation, impressment, and morale; and black enlistment, occupation, and pacification. Readers of this work need to be aware of several factors about Civil War cavalry generally and Tennessee Union cavalry particularly. Congress in July 1862—before the Tennessee mounted units were mustered—defined its intent for the organization of volunteer cavalry along the lines for regular U.S. Army cavalry. Seldom if ever was this intent followed in every detail. Congress defined a regiment as twelve companies commanded by a colonel, supported by a staff of a lieutenant colonel, three majors, and other officers assigned to special tasks, such as quartermaster. In practice Tennesseans, as well as others, followed the precedent of dividing the regiment into battalions of two or more companies commanded by one of its majors. The 1862 act called for “troops” (companies) of 112 officers and men and regiments of more than 1,250 men. 35. W. Todd Groce, Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860–1870 (Knoxville, 1999), 49–51, 58; Groce, “Social Origins of East Tennessee’s Confederates,” in The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays, ed. Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H. Wilson (Knoxville, 1997), 48.

Context and Circumstances

17

But given a year or less of training, combat, injuries, sickness, and desertions, regiments usually dwindled to fewer than 500 men.36 In June 1863 Gillem, by then the adjutant general of Union-occupied Tennessee, issued a general order regarding titles of the state’s loyal regiments because “confusion and misunderstanding [had] arisen from the designation of . . . Regiments.” He offered two reasons, that regiments were organized “by Refugees beyond the limits of their own State, and at points distant from each other,” and suggested a third, that regiments were initially named for a section of the state, such as the 1st East Tennessee, 1st Middle Tennessee, and 1st West Tennessee. Thereafter, for the most part, the names were standardized. To avoid confusing the reader, I will follow the final designation of a given regiment.37 36. Starr, Union Cavalry, 1:463–65. 37. General Orders No. 2, June 10, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA.

Area of Operations for Tennessee Union Cavalry

PART 1

Beginnings

“[The Tennesseans] are brave and enduring and willing to learn, but clannish and imagine slights when none were intended; they should not be brigated together.” Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan

Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 1

The First Year

O

nly a few companies of Tennessee Union cavalry organized during the first year after the state seceded. Federal forces did not occupy parts of Middle and West Tennessee until winter 1862, and loyal companies did not form in those sections until that summer. East Tennessee remained in Confederate hands until the second half of 1863, and refugee-recruits joining the Union army in Kentucky as cavalrymen remained without mounts until fall 1862. Several prerequisites occurred before Tory cavalry units would be formed: Yankee occupation of some unionist-leaning areas of the state, an increase in the number of would-be horsemen refugees to Kentucky, and circumstances that clearly demanded the outfitting of expensive cavalry. Those conditions appeared during 1862 when Confederate conscription caused many more men to flee the state, the Federals occupied parts of Middle and West Tennessee, cavalry raids disrupted Union lines of communication in Middle Tennessee, and mounted guerrilla bands arose after heavy Rebel losses at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh.1 Of the state’s three grand divisions, East, Middle, and West—represented by the three stars in the state flag—only East Tennessee rejected secession on June 8, 1861. With slaves representing only 8 percent of its population and with it being isolated by “geography” and “identity” from the remainder of the state, that section opposed disunion by a vote of more than two to one: 32,923 to 14,780. The significance of East Tennessee’s continued opposition to the Confederacy is difficult to exaggerate. Its 380,292 whites outnumbered the 1. Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 64–108; Cooling, “People’s War,” in Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 115–23.

22

Beginnings

combined white population of Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The Confederacy faced the possibility that this “Switzerland of America” would resist its authority and supply thousands of Union army volunteers, along with its rich grain production.2 An areawide convention of 462 delegates, mostly fairly prosperous, older Whig farmers, met at Knoxville on May 30–31. They condemned recent proConfederate legislation passed by the general assembly and agreed to meet again if needed. They reconvened at Greeneville from June 17 to 20. That meeting’s minority felt that the convention’s resolutions—seeking legislative approval to form its own state within the “Old Union”—did not meet the demands of the time. They caucused secretly, as one of them wrote, and “formed a league, military in its character, the object of which was to resist the enemies of the United States Government,” including the clandestine recruiting and drilling of soldiers. The convention’s majority advised against a revolution in East Tennessee, preferring instead that those desiring to join Union forces flee to camps being established in Kentucky. But the more radical minority soon formed at least fifteen companies and drilled at secluded places on weekends in summer 1861. Many convention attendees and their sons, especially those involved in armed resistance, later served in the Union army.3 Following the legislature’s slightly conciliatory rejection of their appeal, secessionist governor Isham Harris easily defeated William H. Polk, brother of a former U.S. president, in the August general election. Harris encountered overwhelming opposition in East Tennessee, where the people voted for Polk as the lesser of two evils and elected four U.S. congressmen. Sen. Andrew Johnson of Greenville also remained at his seat in Washington, to which he had been elected in 1857. After the August election hundreds of unionists left for Kentucky to form regiments. Some with romanticized views of cavalry from literature—such as those portrayed by Sir Walter Scott’s knights in Ivanhoe—formed mounted companies. Others joining infantry regiments later 2. Corlew, Tennessee, 294–98; Fisher, “Definitions of Victory,” 89; Peter Wallenstein, “ ‘Helping to Save the Union’: The Social Origins, Wartime Experiences, and Military Impact of White Union Troops from East Tennessee,” in Noe and Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia, 4; Robert Tracy McKenzie, One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War–Era Tennessee (New York, 1994), 2–4; Fisher, War at Every Door, 182–83. 3. Charles F. Bryan, “A Gathering of Tories: The East Tennessee Convention of 1861,” THQ 39 (spring 1980): 27–48; Oliver P. Temple, East Tennessee and the Civil War (Cincinnati, 1899), 368–70; Thomas W. Humes, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee (Knoxville, 1888), 347–55.

The First Year

23

transferred to the cavalry, including the entire 4th Tennessee Infantry, which became the 1st Tennessee Cavalry.4 Despite a mushrooming force of Confederate troops at Knoxville by fall 1861, many loyal companies organized in East Tennessee, a few as cavalry. At Sevierville twenty-two-year-old farmer John W. Andes, later historian of the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry, and others formed a loyal cavalry company. In the ensuing weeks they adopted homemade uniforms and began drilling. After representing Union County at the Greeneville Convention, Dr. John W. Thornburgh, a Mexican War veteran, also raised a horse company. Following the August election, he was among hundreds who fled to Kentucky. Riding toward Barbourville, Rebels cut off Thornburgh’s company at Baptist Gap and captured him and eight others. Thirty or so led by carpenter Benjamin F. Skagg continued through to Barbourville. Later Charles L. Barton escaped and made his way to Camp Dick Robinson near Lexington, Kentucky, where he raised a company for what later became the 1st Tennessee Cavalry. After a brief imprisonment, Joel W. Jarvis journeyed to Kentucky to join the same regiment. Thornburgh—whose brothers Duff and Russell served as Tory cavalry officers— later practiced medicine in a Union army hospital at Knoxville.5 Other sore-footed and ragged-clothed squads entered camp at Barbourville, “carrying the U.S. flag at their head.” Some were “armed with long hunting rifles, & many with [only] a rough style of bowie knife.” This first wave of refugees from August to November 1862 raised the first two infantry regiments, one led by Col. Robert K. Byrd of Roane County, a planter and Mexican War veteran, and the other by Col. James P. T. Carter of the Carter clan of upper East Tennessee. The second wave of refugees derived from a failed effort of one of James Carter’s brothers, William B. Carter, who developed of a plan to burn the major bridges of the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad.6 “Preacher Bill’s” bridge-burning conspiracy for the night of November 8 included an underground network of operatives to destroy the major railroad 4. TICW, 1:318, 321, 351; Joseph A. Cooper, A Survivor of Two Wars: Biographical Sketch of Gen. Joseph A. Cooper with Documents and Letters Relative to his Service in the War with Mexico and the Rebellion (Knoxville, 1895), 8; Philip M. Hamer, Tennessee, 1673–1932, 2 vols. (New York, 1933), 1:561–62. 5. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 1–2, 4; William S. Spears to Johnson, Feb. 19, [1862], PAJ, 5:150; Christopher L. Johnson to Johnson, Aug. 8, 1862, ibid., 5:599–600; Temple, East Tennessee, 369; TICW, 1:465, 532. 6. Samuel P. Carter Memoir, UTL, 3–5; Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 33–36; BDTGA, 2:123–24.

24

Beginnings

bridges in East Tennessee, an areawide loyalist uprising, and a Union army expedition through the Cumberland Gap to support the revolt and split the Confederacy. To some degree the conspirators succeeded: they burned five of nine bridges, destroyed miles of telegraph line, and rallied hundreds of armed loyalists. But because of logistical problems, Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman halted the planned invasion by Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas—a regular-army Virginia unionist. This allowed Confederates to imprison hundreds and to reimpose control over the region. This quandary caused the most determined loyalists to flee and join Federal forces. A substantial number of these refugees formed the first four regiments of Tennessee Union cavalry.7 Two future cavalry commanders engaged in the blundering failure by eight Sevier County men to burn the bridge at Strawberry Plains: former county sheriff William C. Pickens—“a bold, dashing, reckless, and good-natured fellow”—and North Carolina native Daniel M. Ray. In a rapid sequence of mishaps, Pickens lit a match, received a shot in the thigh, struggled with his assailant, dropped the group’s only box of matches below the bridge, and was mistakenly cut severely in the arm by an associate. But “too plucky to give up,” Pickens rode off mounted behind one of his party. After the people of Weir Cove nurtured him for a few weeks, he and his group crossed the mountains, first to serve in an infantry unit before Ray became commander of the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry and Pickens of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry.8 Seven future officers of the 13th Tennessee, along with other unionists, destroyed the railroad bridges over the Holston River and Lick Creek. Fifteen hundred men with antiquated arms, shotguns, “butcher knives [and] pitchforks” rallied at Elizabethton on November 9 “to protect [the] bridge burners and Union leaders.” But after despairing of Federal assistance, many “fled to the mountains, some to Kentucky, while others returned to their homes, hoping [for] clemency from the Confederate authorities.” Eventually most would be conscripted into the Confederate army; many of those drafted would desert and join the 13th Tennessee Cavalry in 1863. Other unionists from lower East Tennessee connected with the bridge burning or imprisoned for being accused of it later joined mounted units of Union troops. Of fifteen Bradley County 7. Fisher, “Definitions of Victory,” 102; Paul A. Whelan, “Unconventional Warfare in East Tennessee, 1861–1865 (M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1962), 31. 8. Temple, East Tennessee, 381–84; Nellie P. Anderson, The John Pickens Family (Rockford, Tenn., 1951), 136–37.

The First Year

25

men out of the seventeen who survived imprisonment at Tuscaloosa and then Mobile, six eventually served as officers of Union cavalry regiments.9 In November 1861 William Cliff—a sixty-five-year-old Chattanooga industrialist turned Union partisan leader who had signed the ceasefi re “Crossroads Treaty”—fled with his followers from Sale Creek. Some hurried to their homes, a few to the mountains, and others to Kentucky. In May 1862 Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan “organize[d] a partisan regiment under Colonel Clift . . . to annoy the enemy’s rear” in Morgan and Scott counties, an operation Cliff extended also into Anderson and Fentress counties. Although he mounted 50 of his soldiers—making his men among the earliest Tennessee troops mounted— Cliff ’s 250 men ultimately became the 7th East Tennessee Infantry before being dispersed among other regiments.10 Exiled senator Andrew Johnson’s son Robert—later to transform his infantry regiment into cavalry—was still on the run at the time of the bridge burnings. Fearing imminent arrest, he left his Greeneville home in early September and hid for weeks at Robert C. Carter’s farmhouse. After the failed uprising he took to “the brush” around Greeneville until February 1862. Then Johnson moved northwest, making prolonged visits during the day and traveling at night. Finding Cumberland Gap blocked, he hiked around it to Lee County, Virginia. On February 13 he arrived at Camp Cumberland, Kentucky. There he was identified, welcomed, and fed before consulting with Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Carter, a U.S. Navy lieutenant until 1861 and brother of James and William Carter. Arriving in Washington, D.C., on the last day of February, Johnson learned his father—the new military governor of Tennessee—had authorized him to raise a regiment called the 4th East Tennessee Infantry.11 By mid-March Robert was at Camp Garber, near Barbourville, competing with other would-be colonels for 1,500 recently arrived East Tennesseans, part of a third wave of refugees driven out by Rebel conscription. Within three weeks he had 220 men without uniforms or arms organized into five companies. Exiled publisher William G. “Parson” Brownlow’s youngest son, James P. 9. Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel, History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1903), 77–86, 95; OR, 16(1):858–59; J. S. Hurlburt, History of the Rebellion in Bradley County (Indianapolis, 1866), 117; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, The Chattanooga Country, 1540–1951, from Tomahawks to TVA (New York, 1952), 185–89; TICW, 1:390. 10. PAJ, 5:81n; Govan and Livingood, Chattanooga Country, 185–89; TICW, 1:390. 11. Robert Johnson to Johnson, Feb. 13, 1862, PAJ, 5:143.

26

Beginnings

Brownlow, a “well proportioned [man], with keen, penetrating, gray eyes,” was captain of Company A. He had the fighting spirit of his father, who had just been expelled from the Confederacy on March 15 near recently occupied Nashville. Refugees continued to leave East Tennessee, and by mid-May Johnson had 400 soldiers camped near London, with his headquarters at thirty-one-yearold widow Olivia J. Colyer’s tavern, which he named Camp E. M. Stanton.12 By spring 1862, recruiting officers operated clandestinely in much of East Tennessee. One of these, Sylvanius H. Thompson of Greene County, was assisted by his wife, Sarah. She “tolde” unionists “if they would meete [her] at a surten plase [she] would see thay wold goo thue to the union army.” Once a squad or a company formed and every man possessed a weapon, no matter how crude, their pilot kindled a large fire a great distance away to signal for an all clear. As they moved toward Kentucky, unionists on “the highest peaks . . . between them and the Cumberland Mountains” would signal a response. Most often pilots acted, as was said of Capt. William B. Reynolds of Anderson County, “as a guide, a spy, a recruiting officer and a fighter . . . as occasion demanded.” Like Reynolds they also served as official as well as unofficial messengers across enemy lines.13 Some refugee groups were small. Will A. McTeer of Sevier County, two cousins, a friend, and a guide’s entourage increased to a group of eighteen before reaching Cumberland Gap. To join his cousins on the night of July 22, 1862, McTeer took along “an old brass-barreled horse pistol that [his] grandfather carried in the war of 1812” and a large two-edged knife. On the night of August 3, guide Thomas Burkhart, the one-armed Knox County registrar, led them into a cornfield to meet three other refugees, a new pilot, and three Union soldiers. More than two weeks later on the Kentucky side of Cumberland Gap, the men were greeted by friends from back home. Here four of them separated from the others and joined the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry, commanded by their old friend William C. Pickens. McTeer decided to fire his 12. Robert Johnson to Johnson, Apr. 8, 1862, ibid., 280–81; May 15, 1862, ibid., 397; ibid., 197n, 281n, 299n; New York Times, Mar. 2, 8, 1862; TICW, 1:318; Carter, First Regiment, 27, 38; Hamer, Tennessee, 1:567; E. Merton Coulter, William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands (Chapel Hill, 1937), 205, 210. 13. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 3, 5–7, 13–18; testimonial about Thompson’s role in the defeat of General John Hunt Morgan with descriptions of Thompson’s travels and her work for the Union, Sarah E. Thompson Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

The First Year

27

“brass-barreled pistol” that had been such a comfort. Much to his chagrin, “it wouldn’t fire at all!”14 Politically the Upper Cumberland counties adjoining East Tennessee favored secession by summer 1861 but still included many unionists. The counties of DeKalb, Fentress, Jackson, Overton, Smith, and White had voted against holding a secession convention in February 1861 by a margin of about three to one. But after the turn of events in spring 1862, especially Abraham Lincoln’s call for troops, most counties saw that margin reverse in June 1862. Macon farther west and Fentress still opposed and DeKalb and Jackson still had large minorities against secession. Even White contained a small but silent loyal minority, most of whom were frightened away from the polls in June 1861 and later were cowed into conformity. Physician Andrew J. Clements of Macon County ran for the area’s Fourth Congressional District as a unionist in August 1861. Based on the assumption that Clements—a refugee in Kentucky by fall 1861—represented district loyalists, the U.S. House of Representatives seated him in January 1862.15 As elsewhere, conscription challenged Upper Cumberland unionists who would stay put if left alone but refused to fight for the Confederacy. Jonathan D. Hale—a Fentress County physician finding refuge as an army scout with the 4th Kentucky Infantry (USA)—reported in mid-December 1861 that his company was “[r]apidly filling up” because the Rebels back home were “pressing every Union man they can catch into the Service.” Dr. Clement’s brother Leroy—a Jackson County attorney and another refugee—wrote the following spring that the counties of “Macon Jackson Overton and Fentress in Tennessee . . . had turned out a large number of Soldiers for the Federal Army.” But in doing so they had left behind “many large Families” that could only be protected from “meraudering bands of Cecessionists by cavalry.”16 During late 1861 and early 1862, Elijah Kogier of Clinton County, Kentucky, led a Union band that scouted into Fentress and Overton counties, Tennessee. After the Union victory at the Battle of Mill Springs in eastern Kentucky, war14. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 21–25. 15. Frederick W. Moore, “Representation in the National Congress from the Seceding States, 1861–1865,” American Historical Review 2 (Jan. 1897): 284–85, 292n; Mary Jean DeLozier, Putnam County, Tennessee, 1850–1970 (Cookeville, Tenn., 1979), 36; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” in Amanda McDowell and Lela McDowell Blankenship, Fiddles in the Cumberlands (New York, 1943), 49–50 (June 9, 1861). 16. Hall to Johnson, Dec. 16, 1861, PAJ, 5:61–62; Clements to Johnson, Apr. 9, 1862, ibid., 286–87.

28

Beginnings

ring native factions along the border agreed to a meeting. Kogier headed the Union delegation of seven men that met with Confederates to sign a ceasefire, the “Compromise of the Winter of 1862,” calling for negotiations between the two sides. But the ceasefire ended a few weeks later when Capt. J. W. McNairy—supported by Maj. Willis S. Bledsoe and Col. John M. Hughs— led a raid into Fentress and Clinton counties “to recover stolen property and to retaliate for alleged depredations committed by Union men.” In June 1862 Champ Ferguson—despite the presence of Kogier’s little daughter and her pitiful pleas to spare her father—fired several shots into Kogier at the Kentuckian’s home, killing him.17 Following Mills Spring but before the “compromise,” partisan bands, such as those of Bledsoe and his scout Ferguson, tried to cow unionists into submission. A squad of Bledsoe’s independent cavalry company—created in summer 1861 as a twelve-month unit to guard the Tennessee border—threatened eighteen-year-old John Sproul. One of the men pointed a pistol at Sproul and others accused him of being “a d—nd Lincolite.” They said “his ‘daddy’ voted for the Union” (which was true) and that “his sister was going to hoist a Union Flag over her School House.” Then they gave him a choice: “Our Capital is now in danger, and you have to go into the rebel Army . . . or we will Shoot you down.” Instead he chose to join a company of unionist guerrillas commanded by Capt. David Crockett Beaty.18 Beaty was a “cunning” man of “great courage.” “Tinker Dave,” as he was called, lived in the Obeds River valley, not far from Jamestown, in a cove surrounded by trees and mountains. Beaty’s father, George, and two of his uncles were pioneer settlers along the East Fork of Obeds River. In 1860 David Beaty was appointed by the legislature as one of three state supervisory commissioners for improvements on the river “from the Fentress County line to the mouth of Piney [River].”19 In early February 1862 Ferguson’s men rode to Beaty’s house as he and his sons and a neighbor worked 150 yards away in a field across a creek. After his wife, Avy, denied knowing his whereabouts, the horsemen said that her 17. John S. Daniel Jr., “Special Warfare in Middle Tennessee and Surrounding Areas, 1861–62” (M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1971), 151–52. 18. Albert W. Schroeder Jr., ed., “Writings of a Tennessee Unionist,” THQ 9 (Dec. 1950): 256; Albert R. Hogue, Mark Twain’s Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee: A History of Jamestown and Fentress County, Tennessee (Jamestown, Tenn., 1950), 65. 19. Hogue, Mark Twain’s Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee, 63, 75.

The First Year

29

husband “must take sides in the war or leave the county.” As they rode away Tinker Dave saw them taking “saddles and other things belonging to him.” Once the partisans rode closer to him, he fired on them, “wounding one man and a horse.”20 Following this, Beaty later testified, “They kept running in on us every few weeks,” forcing him to hide in the fields or take to the hills by way of a narrow passage. Occasionally, wrote one Confederate, they would “carry off old Dave’s stock, and drive him to his retreat in the mountains, to which no man ever followed him.” Not a man easily outdone, Beaty took his two sons, Claiborne and Dallas, and raised a company of sixty partisans, “Dave Beaty’s Independent Scouts, USA.” Later at Ferguson’s cabin in Clinton County, Kentucky, when Beaty and others failed to find Champ, they were accused of disrobing and whipping his wife and daughter. Brig. Gen. Basil Duke (CSA) described Beaty’s control over his followers as being “as absolute as . . . the old Scottish Highland chieftain over his clan.”21 Beaty received some financial support from Dr. Jonathan D. Hale, by then chief scout of the Army of the Cumberland, to report on the movements and strength of Rebel cavalry units operating under such commanders as John Hunt Morgan, Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. How and from whom Beaty received the weapons that he and his men needed to defend themselves and others is uncertain before fall 1863, when troops out of Kentucky invaded East Tennessee. Perhaps he received them from Hale, by way of the Cumberland River from the Federal outpost at Carthage, or from John B. Rodgers, a wealthy resort owner and politician robbed by Ferguson in 1861. Rodgers, who resided near the Cumberland Plateau, had been buying weapons in New England in spring 1862 with the aim of “putting down some things in [his] region of the state.”22 During 1862 Beaty worked closely with Elam Huddleston of Adair County, Kentucky—a former Union soldier commanding “a noted gang of bushwhackers”—giving both wide coverage in the Cumberlands. That year Huddle20. Thurman Sensing, Champ Ferguson: Confederate Guerilla (Nashville, 1942), 68, 72–75; Basil W. Duke, Reminiscences of General Basil W. Duke, C.S.A. (New York, 1911), 122–25; James A. Ramage, Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan (Lexington, Ky., 1986), 101. 21. Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 75–76; Hogue, Mark Twain’s Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee, 65; Donald E. Markle, Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War (New York, 1994), 150; Bromfield L. Ridley, Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee (Dayton, Ohio, 1978), 529. 22. PAJ, 5:201n; Rodgers to Johnson, May 4, 1862, ibid., 362.

30

Beginnings

ston and Ferguson, longstanding enemies, fought each other in several “indecisive encounters.” But the Kentuckian fought others as well. According to Duke, who rode with Morgan, “Along the upper Cumberland, [Rebel] pickets and scouting parties had greatly more trouble” with bushwhackers such as Beaty and Huddleston than with outlying Federal cavalry.23 In early 1862, exiles continued to push the Lincoln administration for the recovery of East Tennessee. But military brass opposed the mountainous operation and favored an occupation of Middle Tennessee, accessible by water. Following Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, guarding the main rivers into Middle and West Tennessee, Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio moved south from Bowling Green, Kentucky, and on February 25 occupied Nashville, already abandoned by Governor Harris and others (who soon established a short-lived capital in Memphis). Buell ruled the city until Lincoln’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, arrived on March 13. Within days Johnson greeted his old adversary Parson Brownlow, and they reportedly “ ‘rushed into each other’s arms, and wept like children.’ ”24 Nashville at that time sat entirely in the crook of the Cumberland River. Its streets, according to visiting British journalist Edward Dicey, were “up and down . . . slopes,” its “houses [as] terrace-like,” its “main thoroughfares [as] broad and bright,” and its “state capitol as tower[ing] grandly above the city.” Beyond the city stood forested hills. With its river traffic, five railroads, and network of good turnpikes, antebellum Nashville served as the commercial hub for more than a hundred miles in every direction. Its thirty thousand or so residents included thousands of slaves and hundreds of unionists and free blacks. But many city leaders had fled south with the Rebels, leaving “the care of houses to servants or a few ladies.”25 In April former Whig congressman William B. Stokes of Liberty called on Johnson. The tall, slender, dapperly dressed man with “large gray eyes” and a receding hairline pledged his support and pled for his district’s protection. The “Bald Eagle of the Mountain,” as Stokes was called, led the campaign against 23. Duke, Reminiscences, 122–25; William E. Sloan Diary, Mar. 9, 1863, TSLA. 24. David J. Eicher, The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War (New York, 2001), 179–80, 222; Corlew, Tennessee, 232; Hamer, Tennessee, 1:570; Coulter, William G. Brownlow, 211. 25. Stanley, Memoirs, 123; Edward Dicey, Spectator of America, ed. Herbert Mitgang (Chicago, 1971), 183–84; Walter T. Durham, Nashville, the Occupied City: The First Seventeen Months, February 16, 1862, to June 30, 1863 (Nashville, 1985), 3–4.

The First Year

31

secession in his county and briefly organized a loyal Union militia. Along with 40 percent of DeKalb County voters in June 1861, he opposed disunion. At Liberty’s so-called “Stokes’ box,” 170 of 200 voters cast their ballots against secession. When Tennessee left the Union, Stokes endorsed East Tennessee’s effort to break from the state, momentarily despaired of supporting the Union, and otherwise “remained quietly at home” until spring 1862. On May 3 he presided at a meeting to raise the Stars and Stripes over Alexandria, near Liberty. On behalf of those present, he “pledged [their] fidelity to the flag,” hoisted it up a pole, and spoke for three hours. When word spread to a nearby regiment of John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry, however, Stokes fled to the mountains. From Union-occupied Lebanon on the eighth, he appealed to Johnson for arms for five hundred mounted men that he claimed he could raise in forty-eight hours. Cavalry was a natural choice for a leader who bred horses, including a “herd of fine blooded stock [with] the celebrated racer ‘Ariel’ being one of the number.”26 Within days Stokes appeared with the governor at a rally in Nashville and soon thereafter began raising a cavalry regiment at the city’s fairgrounds. During May the governor held a series of reconciliation rallies at Nashville and single meetings at Murfreesboro, Columbia, and Shelbyville. He knew he needed a political solution as well as a military one and wanted Tennesseans to be a part of both. But the first half of 1862 witnessed a transition on the home front in Middle Tennessee, from Buell’s attempts at pacification by prohibiting foraging, protecting private property, minimizing devastation, and respecting the rights of noncombatants, to Governor Johnson’s severity. Johnson moved increasingly from early attempts at reconciliation through rallies, oaths, and alliances with lukewarm unionists to the more drastic acts of punishing his civilian enemies through censorship, confiscation, and expulsion. Writing during the summer to Buell, then in northern Alabama, Brig. Gen. William Nelson, at Murfreesboro and who like Buell had opposed the appointment of Johnson, summed up the changes since the governor’s arrival. In his oversimplification he wrote that the people of Middle Tennessee have 26. Marsha Young Darrah, “Political Career of Col. William B. Stokes of Tennessee” (M.A. thesis, Tennessee Tech University, 1968), 10–11; Robert H. White, ed., Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, 1796–1907, 8 vols. (Nashville, 1952–72), 6:18–20; clipping from untitled newspaper, n.d., William B. Stokes Papers, TSLA; Joseph H. Blackburn to Stokes, June 6, 1884, ibid.; PAJ, 5:xxxv; Stokes to Johnson, May 8, 1862, ibid., 370; TICW, 1:330; Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1989), 347; BDTGA, 1:701–2.

32

Beginnings

gone “from being neutral at least, as you left it” to being “hostile and in arms, and . . . in our rear.”27 While Nathan Bedford Forrest, as part of a larger army, waited for the next battle in Mississippi, where he recuperated into June after being badly wounded by pursuing Federals after Shiloh, Morgan raided in Middle Tennessee. Morgan crossed back and forth from Kentucky to his native Alabama during the spring, destroying the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Gallatin in March, capturing a wagon train at Pulaski in April, and threatening Nashville in May. Irregular units loosely connected with him and others sought to flesh out companies in the making, to replenish regimental losses, to form independent partisan groups, or to raise guerrilla bands. Unlike guerrillas, partisans—authorized by the Confederate Congress—resided in encampments rather than at home and usually ranged over a wide area. But small squads and even individuals practiced bushwhacking. Reportedly several hundred “rebel bushwhackers” fired on convoys, wagon trains, and railroad cars in and out of Nashville.28 Irregular organizations east of Nashville included those led by Richard “Dick” McCann, a one-time filibuster to Nicaragua from a prosperous Davidson County family; Ellis Harper of Lebanon, an escaped prisoner; and the notorious guerrilla Champ Ferguson of the Cumberlands, operating in White, Overton, and Fentress counties and into Kentucky. McCann’s partisans “operate[d] within the enemy’s lines . . . procuring information of his movements, interrupting his communications, and creating divisions of his forces.” McCann, Harper, and Ferguson connected in one way or another—as scouts, guides, and leaders of anti-occupation detachments—with Morgan during 1862. Below Nashville, Thomas Alonzo Napier and his “Napier’s cavalry” operated west of Columbia, and in Wayne County, Jacob B. Biffle, a well-to-do farmer, organized a regiment near Waynesboro composed of men from Columbia to the Alabama line.29 27. James Alex Baggett, The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 2003), 60, 99–101; OR, 16(1):816; PAJ, 5:xlii–xliii; Peter Maslowski, Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, 1862–65 (Millwood, N.Y., 1978), 67–69. 28. Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 65; OR, 16(1); Jill K. Garrett and Marise P. Lightfoot, The Civil War in Maury County, Tennessee ([Columbia, Tenn.], 1966), 39; Nashville Daily Union and American, Sept. 30, 1862; John Cimprich, Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory (Baton Rouge, 2005), 50; Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 16–17; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 131. 29. Daniel, “Special Warfare in Middle Tennessee,” 35–36, 121–22, 165, 171, 375; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 72.

The First Year

33

Soon “began what would be a dominant theme in the west,” according to military historians Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, “guerrilla and raider paralysis of communication.” Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith, Ohio native, West Pointer, and engineer, oversaw protection of the two railroads below Nashville from his base at Manchester. He had his force “scattered in small detachments . . . at the vital points of the [railroad] lines.” But marauders still gathered intelligence, stole horses and supplies, cut the railroad, and killed or captured his soldiers. To protect the railroad, Smith suggested expelling the disloyal and arming the loyal. Col. Stanley Matthews, provost marshal at Nashville, recommended a brigade at the capital “with a large proportion of cavalry” and another such brigade headquartered at McMinnville to operate in the sixty miles between Sparta and Tullahoma.30 Most counties in West Tennessee voted solidly for secession in June 1861. Some voted in a climate of intimidation (such as in Memphis, with 5,613 ballots for to only 5 against disunion). Hundreds of northern-born citizens of Memphis soon left for the North. Along the Tennessee River and in upper counties, unionists cast a large antisecession vote. Some loyalists in the upper counties soon sought refuge in Paducah, and Mexican War veteran and “soldier of fortune” Robert C. Crawford recruited others for a company in a Missouri Union regiment. In the fall when Governor Harris announced a plan to activate the militia, more men either left for Kentucky—filling Paducah “full of struggling Tennesseans”—or hid in the river bottoms of the Hatchie and the Obion. A few who journeyed on to Saline, Illinois, reported “that a regiment of Union men Could be had in Weakley County alone” (actually it turned out to be more like a battalion). As Federal forces moved up the Tennessee River in early 1862, unionists along both sides of the river appealed for arms, especially in Wayne, Hardin, McNairy, Henderson, and Carroll counties.31 Little public resistance occurred during 1861, except for that by Asa “Black Hawk” Hays and his “Brown Creekers” from eastern Henderson County. On a sweltering summer Saturday at the Lexington courthouse, they confronted secessionists over from Jackson, twenty-four miles west. Arriving with a speaker, a 30. Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, 217; Smith to Johnson, Aug. 1, 1862, PAJ, 5:583–85; Matthews to Johnson, June 6, 1862, ibid., 448. 31. Corlew, Tennessee, 295; Charles L. Lufkin, “The Northern Exodus from Memphis during the Secession Crisis,” WTHSP 62 (1988): 6, 29; OR, 10(2):407–8; Hamer, Tennessee, 2:547, 550; Crawford to Johnson, Feb. 22, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; PAJ, 6:330n; Robert R. Link to Johnson, Dec. 19, 1861, ibid., 5:67–68; ibid., 59n; Etheridge to Johnson, Dec. 19, 1861, ibid., 65–66; Nashville Union and American, Nov. 19, 1861; Bruce Catton, Grant Moves South, 1861–1863 (New York, 1960), 215.

34

Beginnings

brass band, and a Confederate flag, the outsiders came to “drum up volunteers to . . . stop the invasion of the Lincoln Black Republicans.” Once the speaker launched a Yankee-baiting harangue, Brown Creekers raised an American flag commandeered from a nearby saloon. Although this precipitated “an unabashed free-for-all,” fifty green local graybacks entered the fray long enough to prevent “any shooting [or] killing” and to provide the Jacksonians a safe escort out of town. That fall President Lincoln—once fifteen-year-old Hayes’s captain in the Black Hawk War—sent Special Agent Harve Roach to assist Hays. The two recruited Union soldiers on the back roads of Henderson and Decatur counties until Confederates captured Roach. En route to Columbia to be tried as a spy, Roach escaped but was wounded by his escort. Despite the loss of blood, he made his way to a Union family at Scotts Hill, bordering the two counties. There he recovered for a month until Hays got him downriver to Kentucky. Altogether the two helped as many as 150 men reach Illinois.32 While Hays and Thomas A. Smith, keeper of the county’s “Poor farm,” led the way for recruitment in Henderson County during spring 1862, farmer Pleasant K. Parsons organized a fully mounted company in Decatur County, and the Hawkins family pushed recruitment in Carroll County. Men allied with the Hawkins family, such as Lt. N. Cott, received assistance from the post command and provost marshal at Humboldt in Gibson County. They in turn, while pressing horses and foraging off Confederates, recruited slaves as laborers for the post. The Hawkins’s three companies procured one of their own, Judge Isaac R. Hawkins—noted for loyalty to his friends and to his nation—as colonel of the regiment. A Mexican War veteran, Hawkins had served as a delegate to the ill-fated Washington Peace Conference in 1861. Most recruits had “ties of kinship and locality” in the company they joined. In the unionist-dominated area outside of Lexington where Jane Read and her family resided, two sons joined a company organized by Smith and at least five of their cousins enlisted in the same regiment.33 The Hurst family, led by Fielding Hurst, described as “sensible . . . though . . . fractious and litigious,” and Stanford L. Warren, editor of the Purdy 32. G. Tillman Stewart, Henderson County (Memphis, 1979), 49–50. 33. Stewart, Henderson County, 46, 51–52; Cherry to Johnson, Mar. 27, Apr. 23, 1862, PAJ, 6:246–47, 323–24; Hawkins to Johnson, Nov. 29, 1862, ibid., 76–77; Parsons to Johnson, July 16, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; TICW, 1:336–37; C. Y. Cook, “Forrest’s Capture of Col. R. G. Ingersoll,” CV 15 (Jan. 1907): 54; Crofts, Reluctant Confederates, 348; William Younger, “The Diary of William Younger,” WTHSP 13 (1959): 62.

The First Year

35

Whig until 1860, rallied unionists in McNairy County. A narrow majority confirmed the county’s loyalty at a meeting in December 1860 and at the polls in February 1861. But the tide began turning with Lincoln’s call for troops following Fort Sumter. On June 8 secession passed in McNairy County by 1,318 to 586, though failing in the five districts with the fewest slaves.34 Fielding Hurst stood as one of many casting ballots against withdrawal from the Union. The fifty-one-year-old and his “clannish, close-knit family” owned a long neck of land in the northwestern part of the county known as the “Hurst Nation.” He and his wife, Melocky, settled near the picturesque, horseshoe-shaped county seat of Purdy. At one time Hurst served as county surveyor and his younger brother Elijah as mayor of Purdy. During the 1861 election, officials at the courthouse insisted on voice voting. When Hurst’s turn came, without hesitation the broad-shouldered Whig loudly proclaimed, “Against secession!” Then the man who ruled a clan and named his only son Napoleon denounced secessionists as traitors. His political enemies arrested him immediately, “put him in chains,” and shipped him off to Nashville.35 Lying for weeks on “the cold stone floors” of the state penitentiary, Hurst found ample time to think. But being a stubborn sort, he had not learned his lesson. After being returned to Purdy, he formed a secret militia of kinfolk and friends. In November Confederates arrested Hurst again—“for some outlawry,” wrote one Rebel—and returned him to Nashville. After imprisoning him there, they shipped him to Columbus, Kentucky, where he was paroled by Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk within days of evacuating that post on February 20. Hurst returned to Purdy shortly after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson.36 When Union gunboats appeared on the Tennessee in spring 1862, members of the 52nd Tennessee Infantry, conscripted from McNairy’s militia, deserted en masse. Many joined up with a band of anti-Confederates being raised by Hurst. Writing to his wife from nearby Savannah, Tennessee, on March 18, General Grant mentioned “a strong manifestation of Union feeling in this section [of Tennessee].” According to him, five hundred men had “come in vol34. Charles L. Lufkin, “Divided Loyalties: Sectionalism in Civil War McNairy County, Tennessee, THQ 47 (fall 1988): 169–73; Memphis Appeal, Dec. 11, 1860, PAJ, 7:180n; Pitts, Reminiscences, 184. 35. Gary Blankinship, “Colonel Fielding Hurst and the Hurst Nation,” WTHSP 34(1980): 71–74; J. Louis Adams, “Old Purdy,” WTHSP 6 (1952): 10–11, 13; BDTGA, 2:444–45, 954–55. 36. Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 75–77; Mercey Otey, “Story of Our Great War,” CV 9 (Mar. 1901): 107.

36

Beginnings

untarily and enlisted to prevent being drafted on the other side.” Some of these volunteered for northern units, but others joined Hurst or Hawkins. In early March Hurst and his men marched more than fifty miles northwest to Trenton. There they assembled near the depot in a variety of ill-fitting uniforms before half of the garrison, who had come out to see a sort of sideshow. Standing erect with his “tall silk hat, a long coat with brass buttons, baggy jean pantaloons, and an old sword,” the clean-shaven, black-haired Hurst offered his men as scouts to Brig. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, who had been assigned to reconstruct a 150-mile section of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad running from Corinth, Mississippi, to Columbus, Kentucky.37 For weeks Hurst’s band—including twenty-three relatives—acted as guides, scouts, and spies for Dodge. When the Iowa general dispatched scouting parties, McNairy County men faded into the countryside, only to reappear slowly the next morning. Dodge once declared that if he met the enemy, he “hoped it would be about noon so [he] could have the services of [Hurst’s] regiment.” Hurst’s men concealed themselves better and gathered more intelligence by riding roads less traveled, but in doing so they could also be mischievous and larcenous. Three of them raided John H. Meek’s farm at Stantonville in late March and stole fifteen head of his livestock.38 Dodge taught Hurst’s men to determine the number of enemy soldiers “by the space [they occupied in the field or along the road.” He employed a select cadre of them, some already spying for Hurst, to gather intelligence behind enemy lines. Grant, now a major general and commanding Union forces in the West, had delegated this responsibility to Dodge, and as the operation extended beyond Hurst’s connections, it included about one hundred individuals in a number of states. Often spies enlisted women to act as couriers and agents by impersonating visiting relatives. Because of the ever-present danger of their being executed, only Dodge knew the names of these people, and only he compensated them. He communicated with them “by number or initial,” and they 37. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates, 348; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 75–77; Jacob R. Perkins, Trails, Rails, and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge (Indianapolis, 1929), 109–10; Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Selected Letters, 1839–1865 (New York, 1990), 988; Edward S. Richards to Johnson, Jan. 10, 1865, PAJ, 7:388. 38. Stanley P. Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge: Soldier, Politician, Railroad Pioneer (Bloomington, Ind., 1967), 67–68: William B. Feis, Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox (Lincoln, Neb., 2002), 127–28; Pitts, Reminiscences, 189; Nathan K. Moran, “Military Government and Divided Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Northwest Tennessee, June 1862– August 1862,” WTHSP 48 (1994): 91–106.

The First Year

37

“reported to him in cipher.” Despite these precautions the enemy unmasked and executed several Union spies.39 After the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Hurst’s squads scouted for the snailpaced Union forces under Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck until they reached Corinth in June. Then with Dodge’s encouragement, they organized six McNairy County companies for the 6th Tennessee Cavalry at Bethel Springs. Some recruits owned their own mounts, for which the U.S. government eventually reimbursed them, and a few enlistees, such as schoolteacher turned commissary sergeant Thomas A. Ausley, was “furnished Horse & Equipage from Enlistment.” Adj. Stanford L. Warren brought along his black servant Anderson. A handful of Illinois infantrymen—apparently tired of walking—deserted to join the regiment. While recruiting and forming companies during the spring at Bethel Springs, Hurst’s men picketed, scouted, foraged, and fought guerrillas. According to one Johnny Reb, these “renegade[s] . . . , mostly from the back woods and hills bordering the Tennessee River, [were] the scourge and terror of the lower Eastern Counties of West Tennessee.”40 Before former congressman Emerson Etheridge, then serving as clerk of the House of Representatives, left Washington for Nashville with Andrew Johnson in March 1862, he gave Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton the names of two friends in Dresden who could raise infantry in his old district: attorney John A. Rogers and railroad tax collector William T. Wilson. Later an amiable relationship developed between Dresden and Kansas and Wisconsin soldiers moving south along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad repairing its track and bridges; Brig. Gen. Robert B. Mitchell named their encampment Camp Etheridge to honor the antisecessionist whose home stood only a few miles away. On at least two occasions, once for a rally and later for a panic, the soldiers socialized with the unionists.41 By June Rogers was “well advanced with his Regiment” of infantry, and Wilson, having only a few troops, became Rogers’s second in command. As elsewhere, some family members joined the regiment together; John Neely of Carroll County, described as a “Christian clergyman” in the 1860 census, 39. Feis, Grant’s Secret Service, 126–29; Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge, 67–68. 40. Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 77–78; Marcus J. Wright, Tennessee in the War, 1861–1865 (New York, 1908), 144–45; 6th Tennessee, CSR; RAGT, 475; William T. Alderson, “The Civil War Reminiscences of John Johnston, 1861–1865,” THQ 14 (June 1955): 172. 41. TICW, 1:333–34; ORS, 65:527, 531; Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge, 67; RAGT, 475; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 78.

38

Beginnings

and his four oldest sons enlisted in the regiment. In August Rogers appealed to have his five companies mustered. He especially wanted each man to receive his bounty of twenty-five dollars. Many, he wrote, had “families . . . in destitute circumstances and could be much relieved by a . . . small sum of money.” Rogers also asked to raise one or two cavalry companies, feeling they could obtain information that would enable his infantry to operate more effectively against guerrillas. But bound by tradition and regulation, the army rejected his idea as “wrong in principle & practice.” That fall Rogers’s regiment served at Trenton and Dresden before being ordered to Jackson in midDecember.42 The first four regiments of Tennessee Union cavalry organized from the eastern part of the state recruited enough troopers during spring 1862 to survive as units, though Pickens’s 3rd and Col. Richard M. Edwards’s 4th were hardly more than battalions until 1863. Soldiers of Johnson’s 1st—initially an infantry regiment—journeyed in small squads from mostly the villages, hamlets, and farms of a cluster of mountain counties north and east of Knoxville. Some arrived from the section’s most southwestern counties of Bradley, Hamilton and Marion before organizing as companies in Kentucky. Men of Ray’s 2nd Regiment largely appeared in small companies already organized in the isolated areas of Blount and Sevier counties during summer 1862, when Confederates consistently enforced conscription but Federals controlled the Cumberland Gap. Edwards’s and Pickens’s men—originally in the same unit—hailed for the most part from Blount, Sevier, and Greene counties as well as from the counties of Scott and Sullivan, bordering Kentucky. Most had joined at Edwards’s recruiting station at Cumberland Gap during summer 1862. The presence of Rebel troops at Knoxville, as well as the town’s pro-Confederate sentiment, especially among the urban well-to-do and influential religious folk, convinced some to stay. Professor and minister John S. Craig of Maryville College described the town of Maryville as a “contemptible hot bed of secessionists” whose “foremost” leaders “made pretentions to piet[y].” Craig’s descrip42. Etheridge to Johnson, June 9, 1862, PAJ, 7:349n; West T. Belisle to Johnson, Dec. 7, 1862, ibid., 6:88–90; Rogers to Johnson, Aug. 20, 1862, ibid., 5:634–35; TICW, 1:391; Stephen Z. Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander (Baton Rouge, 1973), 168–69; Moran, “Military Government and Divided Loyalties,” 82–93; Hamer, Tennessee, 2:540; 6th Tennessee, CSR.

The First Year

39

tion of Maryville could have applied just as easily to Knoxville, Cleveland, or Chattanooga.43 In his history of the 3rd Tennessee, McTeer enumerated the prewar background—age at enlistment, county of origin, occupation, and marital status— of each of its forty-six regimental and company commissioned officers (colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants). Forty-one of the forty-six resided in seven East Tennessee counties: Knox (nine), Sevier (eight), Blount (eight), Jefferson (five), Meigs (five), McMinn (three), and Monroe (three). Regimental officers came mostly from Sevier, Jefferson, and Blount counties, suggesting that a majority or a large plurality had resided in those areas. Four companies consistently elected officers from one county—Company A for Blount men, Company E for Knox men, Company F for McMinn men, and Company G for Meigs men—again suggesting the individual company’s composition. As one might expect, most of the officers (at least thirty-three) were known to be thirty years old or younger. At least thirty-three were farmers, an indication that they resided in the countryside, and only a scattering practiced professions (six), trades (three), or sales (two), the antithesis of the Confederate army officers examined by Groce. Of those whose marital status were known (thirty-five), most were single (twenty-one), possibly because of their refugee status and the fact that many less-than-prosperous farmers married later than expected; the average age of a married officer among them was thirty-two. It would take more of 1862 before these outlines of the Middle and West Tennessee Union cavalry began to be filled in to create a portrait of regiments.44 43. Carter, First Regiment, 269–331; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 240–55; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 483–99; TICW, 1:318–54; Robert Tracy McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (New York, 2006), 123–28; Craig to Johnson, Feb. 21, 1862, PAJ, 5:153–55. 44. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 240–50; Groce, Mountain Rebels, 49–51, 58.

CHAPTER 2

Regiments in the Making

M

ost would-be cavalrymen at Cumberland Gap, where Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan concentrated his division in June 1862, lacked horses. Initially Morgan, commanding the Seventh Division, Army of the Ohio, armed these recruits with “old Harper’s Ferry muskets” until Belgian muskets arrived. The Tennesseans drilled as infantry every day, and “to all intents and purposes,” without horses, they were infantrymen. During the Confederate invasion of Kentucky in summer 1862, Maj. Gen. E. Kirby Smith, advancing from Knoxville moving northwest, cut off the food supply of Morgan’s division, forcing the Federals to live on quarter-rations of fatback, beans, and rice. One of the few consolations for Morgan’s men was music at night from the regimental bands of the 33rd and 49th Indiana Infantry, which tried to outplay each other. Once a glee club of Germans from the 33rd Indiana “entered into the contest” and received “as much applause” as did the others, and all the bandsmen “became jealous.” When they “drowned out” the singers, the German boys yelled, “Go to H—l with your Cumberland Gap and starvation.”1 By this time Union commanders in Kentucky and Tennessee realized that only cavalry could counteract the “predatory incursions” of enemy partisans. Brig. Gen. James G. Spears—a Tennessean commanding one of the Seventh Division’s brigades—and Morgan convinced Governor Johnson to authorize another regiment of unionist cavalry. They recommended as commander Richard M. Edwards, a legislator until early 1862. A veteran of the Mexican 1. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 21–23; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 16–17; Spears and Daniel C. Trewhitt to Johnson, May 12, 1862, PAJ, 5:379.

Regiments in the Making

41

War then serving as commissary for Spears, Edwards was widely known in lower East Tennessee as an able attorney, orator, and politician.2 Morgan promised to help Edwards outfit the regiment, but he could provide neither “carbines, pistols, sabers nor cavalry uniforms,” though he did issue muskets. Edwards somehow collected enough horses to mount his first company of “sturdy boys fresh from the farms and shops.” As did Edwards, his regimental second in command, Jacob M. Thornburgh, “used his own . . . means . . . in recruiting.” Other officers included two former sheriffs, Capt. Meshack Stephens of Morgan County and Maj. William C. Pickens of Sevier County. Edwards agreed that once the army mustered in the regiment, he would be second in command to Pickens, a veteran of the Mexican War. But by August 1862 the two parted ways. Edwards described the happy-go-lucky Pickens as a “d—ned scoundrel,” a man “devoted to the bottle and cards.” Pickens accused Edwards of being disloyal because he had served in the Rebel legislature.3 With encouragement from General Spears, two other cavalry regiments organized. Col. Daniel M. Ray and Lt. Col. William R. Cook, resourceful men who promised to provide their own horses, began forming the 2nd Tennessee. Ray was a delegate to the Greeneville Convention and accompanied Pickens as one of the bridge burners. Cook, a Nicholasville, Kentucky, storekeeper, had been the 3rd Tennessee Infantry’s sutler. By the end of July, they had enlisted 103 cavalrymen, including a major and recruiter named William R. McBath, until then a captain in the 1st Tennessee Infantry. By now Robert Johnson had requested that his 4th East Tennessee Infantry be converted into cavalry. At his father’s request, Secretary Stanton authorized the purchase of horses. But mounts could neither be purchased nor confiscated near Cumberland Gap. When Morgan evacuated the area on September 7, the cavalry regiments remained works in progress.4 Recruitment of unionists slowed as the Confederates blocked the mountain passes in to and out of East Tennessee in fall 1862. But Colonel Johnson added to the 1st Tennessee three companies composed primarily of men from 2. Edwards to Johnson, June 6, 1863, PAJ, 6:239–40; Edwards to Johnson, Oct. 14, 1862, ibid., 27–28; Richard M. Edwards, 4th Tennessee, CSR. 3. Edwards to Johnson, Nov. 24, 1862, June 23, 1863, PAJ, 6:67–68, 264–68. 4. Daniel C. Trewhitt and others to Johnson, June 20, 1862, ibid., 5:493–94; Johnson to Edwin M. Stanton, June 25, 1862, ibid., 506–7; William R. McBath, 4th Tennessee, CSR.

42

Beginnings

Bradley County. Many of these refugees arrived by journeying on the west side of the Cumberland Mountains. Richard “Red Fox” Flynn and his wife, “Aunt Zilphia,” of Cumberland County, assisted by other men and women, operated a “safe line” of seldom-traveled roads and trails, reaching from Walden’s Ridge above Chattanooga into Kentucky. Stops included Y. C. Sniprip’s house in the Sequatchie Valley. Sniprip met Flynn at Big Creek, where “Red Fox” then led the refugees to his home and “way station” in Flynn’s Cove. Flynn continued with them to Possum Creek, Kentucky, where Jim Ferguson—unionist brother of Rebel guerrilla Champ Ferguson—operated a line north from Albany in Clinton County.5 As Morgan’s half-starved division started toward Ohio, Pickens and Edwards argued about who outranked whom and who would be first in the column. When Pickens rode to the front and cried, “Shoulder arms! Forward march!” only his brother, Capt. Samuel Pickens, and his Company A followed him. This company, with thirty men mounted—some with “neither saddle nor bridle”—and the others on foot, acted as a sort of advanced guard. Each horseman rode with “a large Belgian musket in [one hand] and a heavily-packed knapsack on the back,” containing everything but food. Through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, they faced “down[ed] trees and . . . other obstacles in the road.” To their rear Rebels “bushwhack[ed]” them and “pick[ed] up . . . worn out soldiers.”6 In that part of eastern Kentucky, “whisky and brandy seemed to be the only commodity” found in “abundan[ce],” so Morgan’s command was often “a drunken army.” But his troops could not live by drink alone. Some of Major Pickens’s troopers, now calling themselves the 3rd Tennessee, discovered that they could produce cornmeal by creating “Armstrong Mills,” made by “melting the solder from a canteen” and punching holes with a hammer and nail into each “turtle’s shell” half. These grates, “carried in the haversack . . . on the march,” plus some arm power could turn corn “too hard to roast” into cornmeal. During the day the men of the regiment “kept a sharp eye” out for cornfields and “gathered” as much as could be “carried.” After discovering a good find on the march one day, that evening the “Armstrong Mills” could be heard well into the night as each trooper ground his corn.7 5. TICW, 1:318, 321, 324–25, 326–27; Carter, First Regiment, 269–331; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 16, 25–26. 6. Harvey, Tales of the Civil War Era, 51. 7. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 26–27, 32.

Regiments in the Making

43

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Kentucky and Virginia

On September 29, while “starving almost to desperation,” the men of the 3rd Tennessee spotted “a large drove of turkeys . . . in a yard at the side of the road.” Without soliciting anyone’s authority, one company corralled thirteen of the birds, another captured twenty. One soldier felt that, considering their condition, the men would have taken the turkeys from their own mothers. But General Morgan “stormed and raved like a mad man,” threatening to turn the guilty men over to the Rebel John Hunt Morgan. Still he did not demand the return of the turkeys. Perhaps he realized, as one of his men claimed, that they “would have fought him for [the] turkeys.” Although they had “a supper” that would long “be remembered,” the Tennesseans never forgave the general for his lack of empathy regarding their condition.8 After marching for eighteen days from Cumberland Gap, Morgan’s men— many half-naked, “Hatless and Shoeless”—entered camp on October 7 near Portland, Ohio. There the cavalry companies elected their officers and received “new Yankee blue” uniforms. One soldier wrote that the men “stepp[ed] out of the dirty, ragged clothes, some . . . worn over 300 miles.” On October 23 they arrived at Gallipolis and camped above the town near the Kanawha River, flowing down from northwestern Virginia.9 Meanwhile, after being given a brigade in June, Col. John Hunt Morgan left Knoxville in July with more than eight hundred ragged cavalrymen variously 8. Ibid., 30–31. 9. Ibid., 35–36.

44

Beginnings

armed bound for his adopted state of Kentucky. He went to strike Buell’s line of communication, destroy enemy supplies, and recruit soldiers. Near Sparta, Tennessee, he chose as his guide Champ Ferguson, described as a large, tall, “powerfully built” man in his mid-thirties, with black hair of “thick curls” and a “stiff . . . beard,” who took no prisoners. He had murdered several unionists at their homes, assuming they would kill him if he did not kill them first. After Morgan accomplished significant destruction, though not his dream of fomenting an uprising in Kentucky, he returned temporarily to Sparta.10 That same month Forrest with one thousand cavalrymen captured Brig. Gen. Thomas T. Crittenden of Indiana and his command at Murfreesboro and briefly occupied the attractive town of close to three thousand people. This engendered a shockwave through nearby Nashville and all the way to Washington. Broadly speaking, as Buell put it, Forrest had “intimidate[d] our friends and embolden[ed] our enemies.” The devil was in the details, as the general reported: Forrest’s exploit had threatened Nashville and the railroad between the capital and Chattanooga, delayed repairs to the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, postponed the occupation of McMinnville, and cost the immediate detachment of two divisions from Grant’s army to defend the capital.11 Both Buell and Governor Johnson attempted to obtain more cavalry as the only solution to opposing such raids. But the army denied their requests because cavalry was unavailable. Finally General in Chief Henry W. Halleck suggested that “[c]avalry be raised . . . for home purposes as . . . done in Missouri: under the authority of the President.” Johnson reacted by wiring for a thousand each of carbines, pistols, and saddles. He also assisted William Stokes in recruiting cavalry and personally directed the confiscating of horses in Davidson County.12 By August 1862 Stokes had only two companies totaling 122 soldiers, mostly men from DeKalb County “making their way generally by night” to the camp. Periodically he sent undercover recruiters back into the county. Generally recruits either owned slaves, as did Stokes, or were children of slaveholders from the slaveowning locations of Liberty and Smith Fork. A large majority of their 10. Proclamation Concerning Guerrilla Raids, May 9, 1862, PAJ, 5:374–75; Francis H. Gordon to Johnson, May 27, 1862, ibid., 423–24; OR, 10(1):31–32, 876; Duke, Reminiscences, 124; Henry M. Cist, The Army of the Cumberland (New York, 1885), 35. 11. Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, 217; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 136–63. 12. Johnson to Lincoln, July 15, 1862, PAJ, 5:561; Cist, Army of the Cumberland, 41; R. W. Johnson, Soldier’s Reminiscences, 196–97.

Regiments in the Making

45

families had supported the Whig Party, and most were relatives or neighbors of other volunteers. John Davis of Liberty, for example, had three sons and three nephews join Stokes’s regiment. Other than for opposing secession, they enlisted for different reasons: Capt. Ezekiel W. Bass, “to protect life and property”; Pvt. Eli Evans, “to be with my old associates”; and 1st Lt. Wingate T. Robinson, “to join the winning side.”13 During late summer and early fall 1862, Stokes’s was one of several state Union cavalry regiments in Middle Tennessee, all in various stages of being trained, armed, and mounted. By the end of the year, he had eight hundred men in seven companies. These “Tennesseans,” the governor believed, understood “the Country and People” and could “aid in recruiting and [in] scattering Guerilla Bands.” At least two of Stokes’s officers, Robinson and Capt. Eli G. Fleming of Warren County, served as scouts, spies, and guides for Union generals before joining the 5th Tennessee. In addition to the two original companies mainly from DeKalb County, he had two others from Bedford County below Nashville, a county whose unionists carried six of its nineteen districts against secession in the June 1861 referendum. Two other companies came readymade from northern Alabama.14 In August Governor Johnson appealed for horses to Buell, by now at Huntsville, Alabama. Some horses sent had men riding them, troopers organized by Col. Abel D. Streight of the 51st Indiana Infantry consisting of the first two companies of the 1st Alabama Cavalry (USA). By mid-July “several parties of loyal Alabamians” had entered Federal lines near Mooresville, “begging [for] protection and a chance to defend the flag.” Upon requests from these unionists, Streight also crossed enemy lines into the mountains to escort other recruits to safety. The first two companies became Companies D and F of the 5th Tennessee on September 8.15 By early September Stokes reached an agreement for fodder with Elizabeth M. 13. RAGT, 441; TICW, 1:329–30; BDTGA, 2:166; Thomas G. Webb, DeKalb County (Memphis, 1986), 29; Darrah, “William B. Stokes,” 69–70; Crofts, Reluctant Confederates, 347; Elizabeth M. Harding to William G. Harding, Aug. 5, 1862, in Heroines of Dixie: Confederate Women Tell Their Story of the War, ed. Katharine M. Jones (Indianapolis, 1955), 163. 14. Charles R. Gunter Jr., “Bedford County during the Civil War” (M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1963), 21, 28; OR, 16(1):414–15; Eli G. Fleming, 5th Tennessee, CSR; PAJ, 6:163n; Robinson to Quartermaster General’s Office, May 30, 1867, Wingate T. Robinson Papers, TSLA. 15. Johnson to Buell, Aug. 2, 1862, PAJ, 5:590–91; Johnson to Halleck, July 15, 1862, ibid., 556; ORS, 1:5, 23; OR, 16(1):785–86.

46

Beginnings

Harding, mistress of Belle Meade, a 1,200-acre plantation west of Nashville. To keep his troops off the plantation, she sent him “at least sixty tons of hay” in her wagons. She promised to “haul to him all the forage on the place” so she and her servants would not be “subjected . . . to insult [and] danger.” In a conversation with Stokes, she detailed the continued plundering of Belle Meade by Union soldiers despite a four-man personal guard granted to her by the military.16 Brig. Gen. Charles Cruft of Indiana, now commanding at Murfreesboro, pressed Stokes’s raw recruits into action after graybacks commanded by Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Anderson—one-time Nashville postmaster back from Virginia—attacked a mail train south of Spring Hill. On August 6, nearly four hundred regulars, partisans, and returning veterans of Anderson’s command—many raised by Captain Napier near Charlotte and Centerville—threw crossties on the tracks. They fired a volley at the oncoming locomotive, but the train’s daring engineer forced the pile of ties off the track. With four bullets in his brakeman and twelve wounded passengers, he sped on to Columbia. Anderson returned his troops to camp at Kinderhook on the Natchez Trace.17 Cruft and Brig. Gen. James S. Negley, commanding at Columbia, dispatched troops to capture the perpetrators spotted earlier by their scouts. With what horses Cruft could find, he mounted Col. Eli H. Murray’s well-nigh horseless 3rd Kentucky Cavalry and any of Stokes’s men not yet mounted. This force rode west on August 10 to Kinderhook, nearly forty miles away. Before dawn the next morning, they struck 175 drowsy soldiers, driving them for four hours through a woody countryside, killing 20 and capturing 27. Negley’s force from Columbia arrived later and drove “the enemy in every direction. Napier’s cavalry and Duncan B. Cooper’s of Maury County later rendezvoused near Ashland City, west of Nashville.”18 Later in August Stokes’s cavalry served as scouts and escorts for Col. John F. Miller’s light infantry brigade, guarding supplies around Nashville. Operating out of Murfreesboro, Miller patrolled an area bounded to the east by Carthage and to the west beyond Franklin. To keep himself “fully informed,” the colonel was authorized to “use money as freely as necessary.” He had fifty wagons to 16. Elizabeth M. Harding to Johnson, Sept. 14, 1862, PAJ, 6:10–12; Ridley Wills III, The History of Belle Meade Mansion, Plantation, and Stud Farm (Nashville, 1991), 107; Carroll Van West, ed., The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Nashville, 1998), 60. 17. James S. Negley to Johnson, Aug. 7, 1862, PAJ, 5:597–98; OR, 16(1):842–43. 18. Negley to Johnson, Aug. 7, 1862; OR, 16(1):842–43.

Regiments in the Making

47

move his infantry expeditiously. On each venture out from the city, every man had three days’ rations and otherwise subsisted off the countryside. Miller enlisted a butcher and a telegraph operator to help him feed his troops and communicate with headquarters.19 On September 2 Miller’s men reconnoitered on the Dickerson Pike north of Nashville. Miller deployed Stokes and an infantry regiment to locate a reported enemy detachment. Col. James D. Bennett, a Gallatin merchant, had four hundred soldiers of his 9th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) encamped between the pike and White’s Creek. Exiting the road at Center Meeting House, Stokes followed an isolated path two miles west before finding a friendly farmer who guided him two more miles to Bennett’s camp. In a surprise assault Stokes’s mixed force scattered the graycoats, mortally wounded Bennett, and captured eight others, including the colonel’s brother, Capt. Robert Bennett, a former legislator. Then over a four-mile route “strewn with clothing, arms, etc.,” Stokes’s cavalry killed four, wounded six, and captured eighteen more before Miller reinforced them.20 Despite these victories and the regiment’s growth, Stokes experienced command problems during the fall, mostly with young officers who considered him “incompetent.” Leading the opposition was 1st Lt. Henry L. Newberry, a former Detroit lumberyard operator whose assistance to Governor Johnson had gotten him an appointment to the regiment. By mid-October Stokes insisted that his subordinate resign. Newberry in turn sent Governor Johnson a list of disgruntled officers and their complaints against the colonel. Among other charges he claimed that Stokes disliked northerners. But he weakened his argument by writing that Maj. John Murphy of Iowa “entirely control[ed] Colonel Stokes.” Stokes had assigned Murphy, with the 4th U.S. Cavalry since 1855, to oversee the training of his troops. No resolution would come of the Stokes-Newberry controversy until 1863.21 With Nashville weakly defended, Morgan and Forrest attacked the city on November 5. Morgan raided Edgefield, hoping to destroy three hundred railroad cars and the army’s pontoon bridges across the Cumberland River. But Illinois infantry restrained the Rebels long enough to bring support over the bridge and finally repulse Morgan with the loss of only an old railroad building. Meanwhile Forrest attempted a diversion by firing on pickets south of 19. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 2. 20. OR, 16(1):954–55; Durham, Nashville, 121–22; Nashville Daily Union, Sept. 21, 1862. 21. Newberry to Johnson, Oct. 25, 1862, PAJ, 6:38–39.

48

Beginnings

Nashville. This caused General Negley, now commanding the city, to lead a force of fourteen hundred south on the Franklin Pike. Seven miles from Franklin, he sent Stokes ahead to charge the rear of Forrest’s cavalry and then to retreat so as to cause the enemy to stop and fight. When Forrest’s main force turned left down a lane unnoticed by Stokes, he continued his pursuit on the pike. This allowed Forrest to circle back and almost surround the Federal infantrymen before both sides opened fire with their artillery and Negley withdrew toward Nashville.22 Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, known to his men as “Old Rosy,” superseded Buell, replaced because of his slowness to pursue Bragg out of Kentucky after the Battle of Perryville. Rosecrans moved his army, now known as the Army of the Cumberland, to Nashville by mid-November, shortly before Bragg’s Army of Tennessee joined Forrest at Murfreesboro. Rosecrans reorganized his cavalry under the command of Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley, a West Point graduate from Ohio who earlier had fought alongside Rosecrans at Iuka and Corinth. Stanley felt that Rosecrans’s cavalry was “badly neglected,” partly because it was an arm of the infantry, with each division entitled to one cavalry regiment. Before Stanley’s reorganization, wrote one cavalryman, regiments did not “operate long enough as a unit” to be “effective.” But in “sudden emergencies . . . , scattered detachments [from one or more regiments] would be thrown together [and] placed under the nearest unemployed infantry colonel or brigadier general.” That officer in turn would order them out “on scouts, or to engage the enemy; without [their] having any opportunity to acquire that esprit de corps so necessary to successful military movements.”23 With Rosecrans’s support, Stanley stood up to the division commanders by “break[ing] up this foolish disposal of cavalry.” He organized ten regiments of three thousand horsemen into a division with three brigades. He appointed Irish-born Col. Robert H. G. Minty—a former ensign in the British army who immigrated to Michigan—to lead one brigade and German-born Lewis Zahm of Ohio another. Stanley later assumed direct command of a “Reserve Brigade,” comprising Stokes’s regiment, Ray’s 2nd Tennessee, the 15th Pennsylvania (“mostly clerks or young men of leisure and fortune”), and four companies of the 3rd Indiana. After a few strikes on enemy outposts engaged in “collecting provisions and running [flour] mills,” Stanley concluded that his 22. OR, 20(1):3–7; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 4–6. 23. Eicher, Longest Night, 419; Stanley, Memoirs, 120.

Regiments in the Making

49

cavalrymen “had been poorly instructed.” He mistakenly believed that they should depend less on their carbines and more on their blades. To encourage saber use, he requisitioned enough grindstones to have each soldier sharpen his own weapon, feeling it would give him “confidence.” Unfortunately, just as Stanley started to leave with Rosecrans to attack Murfreesboro in late December, he faced a mutiny by the 15th Pennsylvania, whose men enlisted with an understanding that they would be an elite guard. Out of eight hundred soldiers, only four hundred agreed to ride with the army. Rosecrans imprisoned the others for weeks before they recanted and rejoined their regiment.24 Meanwhile, during fall 1862, other East Tennessee refugees, including would-be cavalrymen, kept arriving in Kentucky. In mid-October a pilot named Isaac Bolinger of Campbell County on the Kentucky border collected 450 men at a farm above Sevierville. Many hoped to avoid Rebel conscription. Most were on foot, had four or five days’ supply of food. They had traveled at night and hid during the day. On the “bitterly cold” night of October 22, they arrived at London, Kentucky, “many . . . without coats, hats or shoes.” As the men passed through Lexington, ladies of “Southern sympathies” mistook them for captured Rebels and gave them food “at almost every house.” After obtaining rail transportation to Covington, they “donned the blue” and bade Bolinger goodbye. On November 4 they embarked by steamer for Gallipolis, Ohio, to join a regiment, most signing on with Ray’s 2nd Tennessee.25 Tennesseans protested against being included in the army’s order for Morgan’s Seventh Division to help “hold the access to the Kanawha Valley.” Governor Johnson’s appeal to President Lincoln, asking that they be sent to Nashville “for the purpose of redeeming the Eastern part of the state,” curtailed their stay. Soon Morgan and the Tennesseans went their separate ways. The general’s assessment of them was mixed: “They are brave and enduring and willing to learn, but clannish and imagine slights.” He felt that “they should not be brigaded together.” Later he called their officers “ambitious men.”26 In mid-November all but Robert Johnson’s troopers went to Louisville. Competition for recruits only intensified, and a lasting division formed between the troops of Edwards and William Pickens. Samuel Pickens’s Company 24. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 552–53, 791, 954; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:114–15; OR, 20(2):283; Joseph G. Vale, Minty and the Cavalry: A History of Cavalry Campaigns in the Western Armies (Harrisburg, Pa., 1886), 107–8; Stanley, Memoirs, 123. 25. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 35–36. 26. Ibid., 10–13.

50

Beginnings

A and four new companies of refugees officially became the 3rd Tennessee, commanded by William Pickens. Four older companies numbering three hundred men continued under Edwards’s command as the 4th Tennessee. Along with the mostly Philadelphia-raised 15th Pennsylvania, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tennessee were soon mounted. On occasion, while mounted and turning a corner, the city-reared Yankees experienced “a separation between man and horse.” But “the Tennessee boys could jump on their horses and go at a gallop or run without trouble.”27 At Louisville men later composing Company E, 4th Tennessee arrived on Christmas Eve from Bradley County. Some, such as James W. Goodwin, had hidden in the woods for most of 1862 to avoid conscript officers. Eighty-two of them and their pilot left on December 6, crossed the Hiwassee River and “the hilly country of Roane County,” avoided roads during the day, adopted a password (“Whoo, whoo”) to use if separated, and finally reached their destination of Somerset, Kentucky, on the eighteenth. That night they rested at the courthouse, where some got drunk, “their way of having a good time.” The next day they enlisted in the army, drew rations, and began a four-day march to Lebanon. There they boarded a train for Louisville to join Edwards’s regiment.28 Colonel Johnson went to Camp Dennison at Cincinnati. There he added a company of Bradley County recruits, and through his father’s influence, his regiment was designated the 1st Tennessee. His command was also partially equipped as cavalry. The men “exchanged muskets for carbines,” and each received “a revolver and a light cavalry saber.” Their new “blue uniforms [were] trimmed in yellow,” and their “hats ornamented with feathers.” When horses arrived from nearby Camp Monroe, each company selected a different color. Company C, carrier of the regimental colors, selected black horses, over time “the sorriest of the lot.” Company D chose grays, “the best and hardiest.”29 Experienced cavalryman Charles H. Hunter joined the 1st as a captain and regimental drillmaster. Once saddles and bridles arrived, Hunter drilled the Tennesseans and their horses for six hours a day, training them “in wheeling, 27. Robert Johnson to Johnson, Oct. 15, 1862, PAJ, 6:28–29; Memorial from East Tennessee Soldiers to Johnson, Oct. 17, 1862, ibid., 30–31; Johnson to Lincoln, Oct. 29, 1862, ibid., 44; Morgan cited in Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 34n; B&L, 3:65. 28. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 37–38; Carter, First Regiment, 63. 29. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 23; James W. Goodwin, The 4th Tennessee Cavalry Volunteers, comp. by James L. Pierce (Cleveland, Tenn., n.d.), 1–4.

Regiments in the Making

51

marching, trotting and charging.” Both man and beast needed steady nerves during the “pressure [of] wheeling” and during “the excitement of . . . firing their guns during a mounted charge.” They also had to obey the bugle calls: “reveille, roll call, stable-call, sick-call, officers’ call, retreat and taps or lights out.” On Christmas Day, with eight hundred cavalrymen, Johnson’s regiment moved to Louisville fully mounted but not fully armed.30 Edwards, at Louisville, had stationed Thornburgh at Nicholsville and Capt. James M. Bishop at London to forward recruits to him in squads of ten to twenty. Given an option of infantry or cavalry, with all else being equal, many refugees chose the cavalry. The thought of riding, wrote one observer, delighted men “who had walked foot-sore two hundred miles across the Cumberland Mountains and upon the Kentucky pikes.” Some such as Lt. Meshack Stephens continued to transfer from infantry to cavalry. While scouting for the 1st Tennessee Infantry, the lieutenant was “cut off ” behind enemy lines and “commenced recruiting.” Once he broke through to Louisville with his recruits in December 1862, he enrolled as a captain in Edwards’s 4th Tennessee along with his enlistees.31 Despite their intentions to be cavalrymen, they had to join others in being drilled in “infantry tactics.” This cased them to fear that they would be converted into foot soldiers. Soon, however, they did get to ride as cavalry. Brig. Gen. Jeremiah T. Boyce, commanding at Louisville, had Edwards’s men scout for John Hunt Morgan, then striking at the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. On one occasion Boyle sent the 4th Tennessee to guard the one-hundred-footlong covered bridge across the Salt River at Shepherdsville. Boyce received a polite, though commonly repeated, rebuke from Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, commanding the District of Western Kentucky: “Don’t mind small places; you can’t defend them all and any attempt to do so will involve your being beaten in detail.”32 In mid-December 1862 the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee Cavalry escorted government stores, mules, and other livestock to Nashville, arriving on Christmas Eve, just soon enough to see action at the Battle of Stones River at Murfreesboro. For another month the 1st and 4th Tennessee scouted, trained, and recruited at Louisville. Competition for incoming refugees reached a showdown. Edwards accused the governor’s son of stealing recruits sent in by Thornburgh 30. Carter, First Regiment, 60–62. 31. Ibid., 60–61. 32. Ibid., 64; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 23–24; Meshack Stephens, 4th Tennessee, CSR.

52

Beginnings

and Bishop. Johnson in turn claimed that the men in question had requested his regiment. After an official warning went unheeded, Boyle placed Johnson under house arrest at a local hotel for a day for having enticed 125 men away from Edwards’s regiment.33 Meanwhile in West Tennessee two companies led by Hurst accompanied a force sent in October to Corinth, then under attack by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. Arriving as the action ended, the Tennesseans joined in the pursuit of Van Dorn as far as Ripley, Mississippi. During a charge Hurst and Maj. William J. Smith—a British native and Mexican War veteran who owned a general store at Grand Junction—had their horses shot out from under them, and Maj. Thomas H. Boswell was wounded. But Hurst’s men captured 250 of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s soldiers supporting Van Dorn. In November 600 of Hurst’s men, many still unarmed and dismounted, were mustered in to Union service at Bolivar and Grand Junction. They became part of Brig. Gen. Mason Brayman’s command, headquartered at Bolivar in Hardeman County, a part of West Tennessee’s cotton belt. The new arrivals chose as their regiment’s motto “I give my head and my heart to God and our country—one country, one language, one flag.”34 At the end of November Colonel Hawkins’s regiment at Trenton still lacked “arms, horses & horse equipment.” It had received only “two saddles 14 halters & less than half a dozen bridles.” Neither had Hurst’s cavalry at Bolivar been fully “armed, or equipped.” Both regiments had impressed some civilian horses by issuing “a certificate of value” stating that if the owner thereafter remained loyal, then he would be paid later.35 In a movement for congressional elections in West Tennessee spearheaded by Lincoln and Etheridge, loyalists held county meetings to elect delegates for the Ninth Congressional District at Trenton on December 1 and for the Tenth District at Bolivar on December 15. A meeting at the Troy courthouse in Obion County included local attorney William F. Bradford, who eventually raised the 14th Tennessee Cavalry (USA). Unionists approved a resolution offered by Bradford to elect congressmen and legislators as well as county officials. They also elected twenty delegates to the district convention at Trenton.36 33. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 23–24. 34. TICW, 1:333–34; ORS, 65:527, 531; Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge, 67; RAGT, 475; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 78. 35. TICW, 1:334; Hawkins to Johnson, Nov. 29, 1862, PAJ, 6:76–77. 36. Writ of Election for Congressional Districts, Dec. 8, 1862, PAJ, 6:91–93; William F. Bradford

Regiments in the Making

53

That night guerrillas from the nearby riverbottoms kidnapped three of the delegates, including Bradford and Almon Case, a prosperous local physician and landowner originally from Ohio. Col. Thomas W. Harris of the 54th Illinois Infantry—the commander at Union City—considered the two men his “main stand-by for [the past] five months.” When he threatened to burn Troy to the ground if Bradford and Case were not returned within five days, their captors summarily released them. For protection thereafter Troy unionists looked to bluecoats at Union City, hid in the swamps, or took refuge in Paducah, Kentucky.37 Delegates at Trenton, including many former officeholders and representing Carroll, Dyer, Gibson, Henderson, Henry, Obion, and Weakley counties, nominated Alvin Hawkins of Huntingdon, cousin and law partner of Colonel Hawkins, over runner-up Col. John A. Rogers. At Bolivar with only three of the Tenth District’s eight counties—Hardeman, Haywood and Fayette— represented, delegates instructed nominee Thomas G. Smith of Brownsville “to oppose the Emancipation Proclamation.” Despite a raid by Forrest’s cavalry into West Tennessee from December 11, 1862, to January 3, 1863, almost nineteen hundred voters cast their ballots for Hawkins. But for a few scattered votes, the election failed in the Tenth District. Later Congress refused to seat a winner in either district because of low voter turnout.38 Tennessee’s Union cavalry regiments witnessed only limited combat during 1862. But these Tory troops encountered other frequent challenges they would face throughout the war, including the Civil War soldiers’ worst enemy, disease. They suffered great deprivation due to lack of food and shelter. They also realized that cavalry was secondary in the Union’s plans for the war, though ultimately necessary to fight the likes of John Hunt Morgan. While the Tennesseans experienced close camaraderie among themselves, they witnessed constant bickering among their officers seeking recruits to place in their ranks. to Johnson, Dec. 15, 1862, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Minutes of Obion County Meeting, Nov. 27, 1862, enclosed in ibid.; Charles L. Lufkin, “A Forgotten Controversy: The Assassination of Senator Almon Case of Tennessee,” WTHSP 39 (1985): 37; Moore, “Representation in the National Congress for the Seceding States,” 290–91; Nathan K. Moran, “Bullets vs. Ballots: Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Congressional Election of 1862,” WTHSP 58 (2004):2–6. 37. OR, 17 (2):365–66. 38. Moore, “Representation in the National Congress for the Seceding States,” 290–91; Mason Brayman to Johnson, Dec. 17, 1862, PAJ, 6:101–2; Moran, “Bullets vs. Ballots,” 9, 28n.

54

Beginnings

Yet they also witnessed a uniting of former political enemies as exemplified by the newfound friendship of William G. Brownlow and Andrew Johnson and the command of a cavalry regiment by their sons. These refugee-soldiers ultimately accepted that mountainous East Tennessee would not be quickly redeemed. The army would give Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee, reachable by water, its first priority in the state, and the homegrown Yankees would take part in achieving that goal. With increased enlistment by late autumn 1862, a clearer picture emerged of Tory horsemen in Middle and West Tennessee. Although attorney and newspaperman John Hallum, a part of Forrest’s command early in the war, could scarcely be considered an unbiased witness, his deduction that, by the process of elimination, it could be concluded that these unionists represented “the lower strata of society” certainly warrants consideration. He wrote that the “higher classes”—presumably those most heavily invested in the plantation system—volunteered early for the Confederate army. Another group, comparatively “inferior” to the first in society, waited until they were conscripted. A third group, poor and many illiterate, resisted conscription until the Union army occupied their section of the state, then enlisted with the South’s enemy in hopes of remaining near home. While Hallum’s scenario was largely accurate, his impression that Tories lurked “like vultures” to prey “on the defenseless higher classes” simply was not the case. Confederate civilians were not “defenseless,” and Union troopers were not free to do as they pleased. Moreover, southern soldiers on both sides fought primarily to protect their own—their own lives, their own families, and their own horses—and only secondarily, mostly as occasion demanded, to seize or destroy the property of others.39 What Hallum left unwritten were other characteristics of the homegrown Yankees. Most of them lived in the predominately white counties of the Cumberlands, the Tennessee River counties of Middle and West Tennessee, and the upper counties of West Tennessee with a low ratio of slaveholders, typically residing in the poorer parts of those counties that offered little in way of schooling. Being poor and often illiterate but independent, they often rejected the prosecessionist arguments of the Democratic Party and usually voted for the Whigs. They opposed secession at the polls in February 1861 and again in May 1861. Most were willing to be left alone after secession but refused to be forced 39. John Hallum, Reminiscences of the Civil War (Little Rock, 1903), 27.

Regiments in the Making

55

into the army of a government they opposed. When the Union army entered their section, they entered it to protect themselves and other unionists them from Rebel regulars and irregulars. But as with other soldiers, they wanted commanders with whom they could identify, antisecessionist Whigs who had supported the Confederacy as scantily as possible, men such as Stokes, Hurst, and Hawkins.

CHAPTER 3

Unready for Battle

T

he day after Christmas 1862, Stanley’s cavalry brigades supported Rosecrans’s three-pronged infantry movement toward Murfreesboro. They provided the advance, guarded the flanks, and protected the supply lines. Minty’s First Brigade moved cautiously before Thomas L. Crittenden’s corps on the Murfreesboro Pike, Zahm’s Second Brigade preceded George Thomas’s corps on the Franklin Pike, and Stanley’s Reserve Brigade slogged ahead of Alexander McCook’s corps on the Nolensville Pike. Stanley’s cavalry advance faced Brig. Gen. John A. Wharton’s brigade on the right and two smaller supporting ones. Other cavalry belonging to Wheeler’s command had been deployed on raids elsewhere: Forrest into West Tennessee and Morgan into Kentucky.1 Wheeler’s cavalry, supported by Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham’s infantry division, delayed Rosecrans’s army for three days. “Fightin’ Joe” pushed against the advance until the enemy halted to form a line of battle, then he led a mounted charge against one of the flanks and the rear. Finally, as pressure increased on Bragg’s center because of the mounting number of bluecoats, Wheeler and Cheatham fell back only to repeat the tactic. As the Federals reached the outskirts of Murfreesboro on December 29, Wheeler began a series of mounted raids against Rosecrans’s supply line that continued until the failed Confederate attack of January 2, 1863.2 On the morning of December 27, 1862, Stanley struck Wheeler’s cavalry. The Ohio general ordered a charge and forced the gray horsemen to engage 1. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:114; B&L, 3:611–12; W. C. Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler and His Cavalry (Atlanta, 1899), 50; Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee (Norman, Okla., 1941), 194–95. 2. William R. Brooksher and David K. Snider, Glory at a Gallop: Tales of the Confederate Cavalry (McLean, Va., 1993), 116–25.

Unready for Battle

57

in hand-to-hand combat. But into the night, against an orderly pull back by Wheeler, Stanley edged only two miles east to beyond LaVergne. The next day the Reserve Brigade shifted west to join McCook’s corps at Triune below Nolensville. From there, at McCook’s order, the brigade reconnoitered slowly south down the Shelbyville Pike. Stanley was supported on foot by Brig. Gen. August Willich’s infantry in a forced march to College Grove. After determining that Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee’s corps had shifted east to Murfreesboro, the Federals returned to Triune with forty gray stragglers as prisoners.3 Zahm joined Stanley at Triune on the twenty-ninth to help guard Rosecrans’s right flank. Screening McCook’s advance, the two brigades pushed steadily east on separate roads toward Murfreesboro. When Stanley encountered Wharton’s horsemen beyond Stewart’s Creek, “a narrow stream rushing between high, steep banks,” the 15th Pennsylvania, trying to prove its mettle, recklessly pursued the Rebels. Stretching out for more than a mile, the Philadelphians galloped full tilt into an ambush, losing six men killed, including its commander, Maj. Adolph G. Rosengarten, and five wounded, Maj. Frank B. Ward mortally. The loss of the two “gallant officers” took “the spirit” for duty out of the 15th Pennsylvania. The cavalry advance halted at Wilkinson’s Crossroads.4 The next morning Wheeler and twenty-five hundred horsemen began a counterclockwise raid around Rosecrans’s army. From east of the Lebanon Pike, he moved near Jefferson to LaVergne to Nolensville and back to Murfreesboro, his troopers burning wagon trains, destroying railroad tracks, and capturing more than five hundred prisoners (who he paroled). In response Stanley left Wilkinson’s Crossroads for LaVergne about midnight with Stokes’s 5th Tennessee and the 15th Pennsylvania. But while he was delayed midway there by a minor skirmish, Wheeler destroyed a huge train of three hundred wagons at LaVergne: “A sight,” wrote one Confederate captain, “to make all rebeldom glad. Mules [were] stampeding with burning wagons hung to their traces [and] Yankees running.” Early on the morning of the thirty-first, Rosecrans ordered Stanley to return to McCook’s right. Wheeler, now beyond Triune, was en route to join Wharton at Wilkinson’s Crossroads.5 3. OR, 20(1):617; Edwin C. Bearss, “Cavalry Operations in the Battle of Stones River,” THQ 19 (Mar. 1960): 43. 4. Bearss, “Stones River,” THQ 19 (Mar. 1960): 45–46; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:117; Brooksher and Snider, Glory at a Gallop, 117. 5. Bearss, “Stones River,” THQ 19 (June 1960): 110–16; OR, 20(1):618, 634; Dodson, Campaigns

58

Beginnings

Meanwhile, on the night of December 30, Ray’s 2nd Tennessee had remained as pickets on McCook’s extreme right. They and others followed Rosecrans’s order to light bonfires beyond McCook’s infantry. Unimpressed with this ploy to mask the end of the Union lines, at dawn Bragg’s army surged into Rosecrans’s right flank due west of Murfreesboro. The Confederates, “whooping, screaming and yelling, hungry and dirty,” pushed back McCook’s infantry “a quarter of a circle,” making its final line virtually parallel with the Nashville Pike. Simultaneously Wharton’s pistol-shooting Texas Rangers, outnumbering Zahm’s brigade two to one, drove the Union horsemen back north to within three miles of the Nashville Pike. There Zahm tried to re-form his brigade to guard a southbound wagon train.6 Seeing dismounted cavalrymen of the 2nd Tennessee “running away from the front,” Zahm’s troopers halted them momentarily before “they ran again like sheep.” As Stanley returned from LaVergne and came within three miles of McCook’s corps, he “met stragglers—first a few dozen, then a hundred and finally not less than five thousand” from many regiments. Leaving behind a company of cavalry “to herd” as many stragglers as possible, Stanley galloped on to McCook’s line. Evidently not all of the men of the 2nd Tennessee “ran . . . like sheep” during the fighting that day. The regiment suffered three men killed, including Capt. James H. Morris of Company L, “who fell with his face to the foe.”7 As Stanley joined other cavalry near Overall’s Creek about noon, Rosecrans restored order along his collapsing right flank. In a baffling situation Stanley’s Reserve Brigade got caught briefly in friendly fire from artillery on its left until the men occupied a position on McCook’s right. Stanley accumulated about 950 cavalrymen by combining his troopers with those of Minty near the woods around a meetinghouse west of the Murfreesboro Pike.8 About four o’clock that afternoon, Wheeler’s brigade, returned from the south, attacked Stanley with “a long line of foot skirmishers” supported by a of Wheeler, 50–53; Capt. George Knox Miller to unknown, Jan. 2, 1863, in John Witherspoon Dubose, General Joseph Wheeler and the Army of Tennessee (New York, 1912), 142. 6. OR, 20(1):618, 634; W. R. Friend, “The Rout of Rosecrans,” in The New Annals of the Civil War, ed. Peter Cozzens and Robert I. Girardi (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2004), 211–12. 7. Friend, “Rout of Rosecrans,” 212; Stanley, Memoirs, 126; TICW, 1:322; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 39; T. F. Dornbluser, Sabre Stokes of the Pennsylvania Dragons in the War of 1861–1865 (Philadelphia, 1884), 99. 8. OR, 20(1):624.

Unready for Battle

59

three-gun battery and mounted men on their flanks. Stanley ordered the 4th Michigan and 5th Tennessee dismounted and placed regular regiments on their right and to their rear. The Federals stymied the enemy for over an hour before dismounted reinforcements led by Minty emerged from behind a fence. But the graybacks’ artillery turned them “completely around.” Stanley furiously re-formed behind elevated ground to shelter his troops as Minty led his men in a charge on the enemy’s front line. By dark Stanley and Minty fought their way back to the meetinghouse.9 On New Year’s morning 1863, skirmishers supported by a six-gun battery appeared in the woods to Stanley’s front, forcing him to withdraw along the railroad to the north. On that fair-weather day, cavalry as well as infantry entrenched themselves against another assault. Bragg waited in vain for a Union retreat. Finally at four o’clock on the afternoon of January 2, he ordered an infantry assault against Crittenden’s corps on Rosecrans’s left. Unfortunately for Bragg, Crittenden was backed by fifty-eight artillery pieces, which fired a hundred shots per minute from across the shallow river against the Rebels. The failed charge cost Bragg two thousand soldiers killed or wounded and dampened any desire to continue the battle.10 William Pickens’s 3rd Tennessee escorted wagon trains on the Murfreesboro Pike to the battlefield on January 2 and 3. The first night 300 mounted soldiers and Spears’s infantry brigade guarded a three-hundred-wagon supply train. Another 150 cavalrymen of the 3rd Tennessee and the 6th Tennessee Infantry served as the rearguard for an ammunition and hospital train on January 3. Six miles south of Nashville, near the state asylum, the escort, recently “mounted and armed with muskets,” skirmished briefly with independent squads of Wheeler’s cavalry. Together with the men of the 6th Infantry, they killed ten Rebels and took eleven others prisoner before moving on to Murfreesboro. Unfortunately at LaVergne the performance of Ray’s 2nd Tennessee proved to be less acceptable in guarding trains moving south on January 1 and 3. On both days when attached by Wheeler’s detachments, the regiment’s men were accused of fleeing and leaving others to do the fighting.11 Bragg had retreated by January 4. Stanley slowly moved his three brigades to the fords of Stones River. The following day the cavalry, “with colors flying,” entered the nearly deserted town. Arriving from Nashville, the remaining sol9. Ibid., 618. 10. Ibid. 11. TICW, 1:325; Cooper, Survivor of Two Wars, 10.

60

Beginnings

diers of the 3rd Tennessee viewed “dead men and horses . . . piled in heaps” being buried by scattered details. From Murfreesboro Zahm scouted southwest toward Shelbyville, while Stanley and Minty moved south along the railroad. Pushing the enemy from “one cedar brake to another,” the Federals encountered heavy fire at Lytle’s Creek, fewer than four miles from Manchester. At sunset Spears’s brigade reinforced Stanley. Both returned to Murfreesboro the next day.12 From December 26 to January 5, Stanley’s cavalry ranged over a distance of sixty miles, carrying out reconnaissance, guarding wagon trains, and engaging in cavalry charges and dismounted combat. Overall Rosecrans blamed the vastly larger Confederate cavalry for keeping his “little cavalry almost within [his] infantry lines,” thereby allowing Wheeler to control the countryside. The 2nd Tennessee lost three of the thirty Union cavalrymen killed at Stones River. Ten of its members were wounded. One of the wounded was a private named Frank Martin, suffering a shoulder wound. The examining physician discovered that the small, blue-eyed, eighteen-year-old Martin was actually a woman who had enlisted five months earlier in Kentucky. Although discharged, she later enlisted (again posing as a man) in the 8th Michigan Infantry. The 5th Tennessee had six men wounded and twenty-seven of its horses killed or wounded: evidence that the regiment had experienced the heat of battle. The numbers missing for the 2nd (five) and the 5th (nine) fell below average for Union cavalry regiments (fifteen).13 When Forrest on Bragg’s orders entered West Tennessee in mid-December, hoping to force Grant’s withdrawal from Mississippi, Hawkins was stationed with Col. Jacob Fry at Trenton, Hurst with General Brayman at Bolivar, and Rogers with Brig. Gen. Jeremiah C. Sullivan at Jackson, an important railroad junction. What Dodge wrote of Trenton just as well described the other two plantation-belt county seats: “A beautiful place . . . , Secesh all over.” Forrest’s raid included many twists and turns, but the focus here will be those parts pertaining to the Tennessee Tories: their movements, their engagements— Lexington, Salem Cemetery, Forked Deer River, Trenton, and near Clifton— their behavior, and the context in which they operated.14 12. OR, 20(1):618; Harvey, Tales of the Civil War Era, 33; Bearss, “Stones River,” THQ 19 (June 1960): 140–42. 13. OR, 20(1):619, 630; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 55; Elizabeth D. Leonard, All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (New York, 1999), 322–23. 14. TICW, 1:334, 337, 391; Perkins, Trails, Rails, and War, 94.

Unready for Battle

61

Forrest commanded a 2,100-man brigade armed with “muskets, doublebarrel shotguns and Derringer pistols” supported by a six-gun battery. His brigade of three Middle Tennessee regiments and one from Alabama crossed the nearly mile-wide Tennessee River at Clifton on December 15–16, mostly at night. In “a cold drizzling rain,” Forrest’s men floated across on two newly constructed flatboats, each accommodating twenty-five men and their horses per crossing. Grant alerted garrisons west of the river that Forrest had departed from Columbia, about fifty-five miles northeast of Clifton. A Captain Carter of Hurst’s 6th—probably sent north by Dodge at Corinth—while scouting the left bank, estimated the enemy force at 3,000 men, forwarding his findings by courier to Bethel Springs for rapid dissemination via telegraph. By the evening of the fifteenth, Sullivan and other post commanders knew of the crossing.15 Sullivan dispatched Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a fellow Indiana attorney, east toward Clifton with a battalion of the 5th Ohio—“raw recruits, never . . . under fire”—accompanied by the 14th Indiana Battery. He also dispatched 400 soldiers from Trenton, including Hawkins and 272 of his green troopers, to join Ingersoll. After his crossing, Forrest magnified his army’s size, as he would again and again, by “spreading . . . exaggerated reports,” beating kettledrums, and burning campfires beyond his lines. Despite Carter’s slightly inflated assessment, Sullivan gave way to fear and deception and reported to Grant that he faced a force of “ten thousand.” With Grant’s support he began collecting 10,000 troops himself from posts at Bolivar, Holly Springs, and Corinth to defend Jackson, the main Union garrison in the West Tennessee interior.16 Hawkins joined Ingersoll at Lexington (east of Jackson) on the seventeenth. The Hoosier colonel rushed two companies of the 7th—filled with natives of the area—to reconnoiter toward the Tennessee River. He then marched east until a scouting party of his own under a Captain O’Hara informed him of Forrest’s advance toward Lexington. Immediately he ordered a withdrawal across Beech Creek, five miles east of the town. After reaching there, darkness caused him to camp for the night.17 The next morning Ingersoll skirmished an estimated one thousand enemy troops. Being greatly outnumbered, he withdrew into town, fortified his “two 15. John A. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (1899; reprint, New York, 1959), 90–94; James D. Brewer, The Raiders of 1862 (Westport, Conn., 1997), 75–77; OR, 17(2):423. 16. Brewer, Raiders of 1862, 78; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 94; OR, 17(2):423. 17. Brewer, Raiders of 1862, 78–79.

62

Beginnings

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in West Tennessee

three-inch steel Rodman guns,” dispatched troopers to destroy the bridge over Beech Creek, and placed dismounted cavalry on his flanks. Miscalculating Forrest’s position, he deployed most of his troops along Old Stage Road to the southeast, the shortest route from Clifton. He also sent two of Hawkins’s companies due east of the town to guard Lower Road, unfortunately the route of Forrest’s main column. The two companies dismounted and formed a line of battle along the west bank of Beech Creek near the Lower Road bridge. They removed the bridge’s flooring and repulsed the initial attack of Col. George G. Dibrell’s regiment, soon reinforced by Col. Alfred A. Russell’s 4th Alabama. Then the dismounted Rebels charged up the shallow creek from the south, firing on the Federals’ right flank. Never having faced fire and being poorly armed, the Tories quickly yielded and fled toward Lexington, soon followed by yelling gray riders.18 According to Capt. Frank B. Gurley, leading the Confederate advance into Lexington across county from the Lower Road, Hoosier artillerymen “stood 18. Cook, “Forrest’s Capture of Col. R. G. Ingersoll,” 54; OR, 17(1):554–55; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 95–96.

Unready for Battle

63

by their guns and died like soldiers,” but “with the taking of the guns the cavalry gave way in a stampede.” In Ingersoll’s opinion, Hawkins’s men arrived “in confusion, and on the full run, pursued by the enemy.” He found it “impossible to stop them or direct them.” Although their officers rallied them thrice, the Tennesseans “did not succeed in making a stand.” Whatever the amount of time they defended the guns, if briefly or at all, they swept along the horsemen of the 5th Ohio with them toward Jackson. Still, for more than a day, some riders of the two regiments continued to reconnoiter between the two towns, where about fifty of them were captured.19 The cavalrymen left Ingersoll to surrender. He lost 11 men killed, 11 wounded, and 148 captured, also giving up three hundred small arms, two hundred horses, and the two Rodmans, all surrendered to Captain Gurley of the 4th Alabama. (Gurley was the man who in August, while commanding a mixed force of recruits and guerrillas, had shot Brig. Gen. Robert L. McCook— one of the “Fighting McCooks of Ohio”—near Decherd, Tennessee.) Ingersoll, ever a man of “wit and humor”—even enough to become a popular agnostic lecturer after the war—remarked on seeing Gurley, “Is this your Southern Confederacy for which I have so diligently searched?” The captain assured him it was indeed. “Then I am your guest,” the Indiana attorney said, adding, “Here are the Illinoisans; the Tennesseans have ingloriously fled.”20 Hawkins and most of his men returned to Trenton. One company joined General Brayman, up from Bolivar with hundreds of his troops, including some of the 6th Tennessee, most of whom rode north toward Trenton. Two companies of the 6th remained at Corinth with General Dodge after fighting near there in October, while two others joined Rogers’s 7th Tennessee Infantry to guard a construction train and the crossing at the Forked Deer River north of Jackson. Meanwhile Forrest deceived Sullivan by spreading out his campfires east of Jackson while he dispatched troopers north toward Humboldt and south toward Bolivar to destroy railroad track and bridges. Near Bolivar his men captured several of Hurst’s pickets. But they failed to destroy some of the bridges that Dodge had protected with two-story blockhouses.21 Realizing Ingersoll’s defeat, that night Sullivan sent another reconnaissance 19. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 96–97; Cook, “Forrest’s Capture of Col. R. G. Ingersoll,” 54. 20. Cook, “Forrest’s Capture of Col. R. G. Ingersoll,” 54–55; OR, 17(1):563; O. Edward Cunningham, “Captain Frank B. Gurley, Fourth Alabama Cavalry, C.S.A.: Murderer or Victim?” Alabama Review 28 (Jan. 1975): 82–89. 21. OR, 17(1):593; Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge, 61; 6th Tennessee, CSR.

64

Beginnings

of the 43rd and 61st Illinois Infantry under Col. Adolph Engelmann, who had orders to “join and take command of [any] United States Cavalry [he] might find, and to feel [out] the enemy.” Taking Cotton Grove Road east toward Lexington, Engelmann located a few men of the 11th Illinois infantrymen and some cavalrymen of the 5th Ohio and 7th Tennessee of Ingersoll’s former command as well as nearby enemy campfires. He withdrew to within three miles of Jackson, stationed his troops on each side of the road at Salem Cemetery, and instructed them to “sleep on their arms.”22 At sunrise enemy detachments mainly from Biffle’s and James W. Starnes’s commands—totaling about six hundred men—supported by an artillery battery moved down Cotton Grove Road to demonstrate against Jackson and thereby keep Sullivan’s force in place. Pushing back the Federals’ advance of a few cavalrymen on to its infantry, the Rebels opened up with artillery toward the cemetery and threatened Engelmann’s right flank with horsemen. When the colonel attempted to repulse the flanking units, he found that the horse soldiers of the 5th Ohio and 7th Tennessee had fallen “back about 1 mile toward Jackson without having first obtained any orders . . . to that effect.” Still all was not lost. When the graybacks galloped down the road, a volley from Engelmann’s infantry emptied their saddles, causing a blockade of dead and wounded men and horses and leaving onrushing Rebels easy targets. Following this up with an unsuccessful flank attack of his own, Engelmann soon evacuated to Jackson because of heavy enemy artillery fire. Despite enough gunfire to leave a haze over the cemetery, the Federals lost only three killed and ten wounded, while the Confederates buried seven cavalrymen in the graveyard.23 The remainder of Forrest’s force and their prisoners camped twelve miles northeast of Jackson at Spring Creek on the nineteenth. The next morning all except Russell’s Alabamians moved northwest: Dibrell to Forked Deer Crossing, Starnes to Humboldt, and the rest, including Forrest, to Trenton. Russell briefly fended off an assault by two thousand infantrymen before following Forrest. Starnes easily captured Humboldt. Before riding on, his cavalrymen demolished trestles, ripped up railroad tracks, and burned the depot and its government stores.24 The 106th Illinois and Rogers’s 7th Tennessee Infantry, guarding Forked 22. Brewer, Raiders of 1862, 85–86; OR, 17(1):556–57. 23. OR, 17(1):557–58; Brewer, Raiders of 1862, 87–89. 24. OR, 17(1):593; Hirshson, Grenville M. Dodge, 61; 6th Tennessee, CSR.

Unready for Battle

65

Deer Crossing, were fortuitously reinforced by army passengers returning north to Columbus, Kentucky, on a train out of Jackson, including Brig. Gen. George P. Ihrie, a West Pointer battle tested at Corinth and Iuka. The crossing was ideally located to be defended, with its stockade surrounded “by two creeks [and] a wide swampy bottom.” But Colonel Rogers, who commanded, found himself “at a loss [about] what to do.” Following his candid admission of “inexperience and incompetence” and a consultation among the officers, Ihrie took charge and eventually drove off the Rebels, who had spent several hours trying to dislodge the well-fortified Federals.25 Dibrell followed Forrest to Trenton. Ihrie led Rogers’s troops and two companies of Hawkins’s cavalry to retake Humboldt on December 22. That night the general ordered Rogers to man the fort on the town’s outskirts. Later, much to Ihrie’s chagrin, he found that the colonel had “camp[ed] his regiment in the safest part of town . . . thereby endangering . . . lives, and risking the capture of [Ihrie’s] command.” After a reprimand Ihrie left Rogers in charge of the 7th Tennessee Infantry subject to a negative report. Rogers remained with his command until January 1863, when he resigned and Wilson took charge.26 Meanwhile at Trenton Hawkins’s horsemen added to Col. Jacob Fry’s motley crew of 250 fellow soldiers, stragglers, convalescents, and fugitives, both blacks and whites. Although without artillery, Fry believed that he could make a gallant stand against Forrest’s force, estimated by Hawkins as no more than 800 Rebels; that is, if the general did not have any artillery (which of course he did). Pushing his command, Fry fortified the railroad station rather than the more secure courthouse, where he could possibly hold out for three days but probably witness the destruction of much of the town. He used hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco and bales of cotton to build breastworks. Fry also placed Lt. William F. Allender of Company C and twenty-five sharpshooters from Hawkins’s regiment opposite the depot atop a brick building, six soldiers in a building overlooking another street, and all the others behind the breastworks.27 Forrest arrived within three miles of Trenton in the early afternoon of December 20. Without delay he mounted a charge that brought his galloping, yelling Rebels within fifty yards of the depot before having to fall back about 25. OR, 17(1):594; TICW, 1:337; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 421. 26. OR, 17(1):594; TICW, 1:391; PAJ, 5:459n. 27. OR, 17(1):561, 566, 593–94.

66

Beginnings

two hundred yards. Then he ordered them to dismount, advance, and occupy buildings for his sharpshooters. That accomplished, the general placed artillery on an incline close to the north side of the cemetery, about three hundred yards from the depot. After only three rounds from these guns, Fry brought out a white flag.28 Forrest filled the surrender scene with pride, sadness, and bigotry. He returned Fry’s forty-year-old “family relic” sword with the suggestion that it not be used in “the subjugation of [one’s] countrymen.” Then the “ambidextrous” general had a fine captured “Demascus steel” blade “sharpened on both edges” for his sword. About this time the “Wizard of the Saddle” found himself confronted by Sara Jane Hill, a Yankee engineer’s wife. While away on assignment, her husband left Hill at the local hotel with a son, a sister, and a civilian brother looking for opportunities. The two sisters had rooted for the losing Federals. Mrs. Hill criticized Forrest and the behavior of his soldiers before being confined to her hotel.29 The general paroled Ingersoll and Hawkins to return to their homes and paroled all other prisoners—including 333 of Hawkins’s men and several troopers from Hurst’s 6th Tennessee—subject first to being escorted to Columbus, Kentucky. Placing his hand on the heads of some local lads, he proclaimed, “The Yankees may kill us but these boys will take our place.” Then Forrest ordered the execution of two blacks, blacksmith John Davis and a local barber, because they refused to join his force.30 Before reaching Union City and the junction of the Mobile & Ohio and the Nashville & Northwestern Railroads on December 23, Forrest ordered the destruction of the trestles for fifteen miles through the Obion River bottoms. After observing that the trestles were tough and their own axes dull, his horsemen used “kindling” to burn the tops of the spans, which in turn “expand[ed] and buckl[ed] the rails.” This damage provided great dividends for the Confederacy by closing off Union rail traffic through central West Tennessee for the remainder of the war. Grant shifted the forces guarding the railroad south to 28. Ibid.; Lonnie E. Maness, “Forrest and the Battle of Trenton,” WTHSP 29 (1975): 125–27. 29. Maness, “Battle of Trenton,” 125–27; Thomas Jordan and J. P. Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General N. B. Forrest and Forrest’s Cavalry (1868; reprint, Dayton, 1977), 200–202; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 100–101; Mark Krug, ed., Mrs. Hill’s Journal—Civil War Reminiscences (Chicago, 1980), 127–43. 30. Frederick M. Culp and Mrs. Robert E. Ross, Gibson County: Past and Present (Trenton, Tenn., 1961), 40; 6th Tennessee CSR.

Unready for Battle

67

the Memphis & Charleston line and unintentionally kept much of West Tennessee open for recruiting by Forrest.31 Although the Rebels captured a few men of Hurst’s 6th Tennessee at Trenton, most of that regiment had remained at Bolivar under Maj. William J. Smith. Some with Hurst accompanied Dodge up from Corinth, pursing Forrest for more than one hundred miles over four days as he swept north to Kentucky, destroying the railroad. On Christmas Day he began his return to Bragg’s army at Murfreesboro. Moving south twelve miles north of Lexington at Parker’s Crossroads, Forrest was caught between two Federal forces and lost much of his bounty and some of his men before escaping. One battalion of the 6th Tennessee, led by Lt. Col. William K. M. Breckenridge, confronted the Confederate advance guard near the crossing at Clifton on New Year’s morning but retreated after a brief skirmish.32 Forrest owed much of his success during his raid to his own finely tuned tactical genius and boldness. But he also owed some to circumstance. Beyond the well-defended garrison at Jackson, the Federals were stationed in small units scattered along the railroads guarding depots and bridges. The recent enlistees manning these outposts and blockhouses were largely untrained soldiers suddenly facing their baptism of fire. With rare exception, such as at Lexington, the Federals did not possess artillery, and most of their commanders capitulated quickly once shelled. The Union’s mix of infantry and far too little cavalry also proved inadequate when confronting a rapidly moving mounted force. Bragg’s deployment of Forrest to raid the Union army’s supply line in West Tennessee exhibited one of the war’s best examples of Confederate raiding strategy: more of what Forrest had accomplished in Middle Tennessee, though on a grander scale. Unknown to Forrest, on the whole he achieved the missions of detachments as enumerated by European military theorist Baron Antoine Henri Jomini. Although he did not “compel [the] enemy”—in this case Grant—“to retreat to cover his line of operations,” he did cut one of his lines of communication, the railroad from Kentucky to Mississippi. In the process he held “in position a large portion of the opposition army.” Forrest “carr[ied] off a considerable [amount] of . . . munitions” as well as supplies. He also made 31. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 101–25; Robert S. Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, 1944), 114; OR, 17(2):564. 32. TICW, 1:334; OR, 17(1):481; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 78–79; ORS, 65:527.

68

Beginnings

“demonstration[s]” to keep the enemy in place at Jackson and temporarily “invested . . . fortified place[s] for a certain time.” These actions frightened his enemy and, along with Morgan’s simultaneous raid into Kentucky, lifted morale among discouraged Confederates. Neither the Tory regiments nor the Union army command in West Tennessee were ready for the enemy operation. Forrest’s raid left much of the section’s central rail lines destroyed and caused Union commanders there to concentrate their Tory cavalrymen thereafter as guards along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad near the Mississippi border. Throughout the war the scarcity of Federals in most of West Tennessee provided a rich recruiting and conscripting territory for Forrest.33 Because of the immense burden on its resources following Shiloh, the Confederacy began paroling Federal soldiers soon after their capture so they could return to their homes and await exchange for Rebel prisoners. To discourage the surrender of its troops, the Union army established a number of “camps of instruction.” From those camps these men could be sent to serve on the frontier or exchanged “man for man, officer for officer” for Confederate prisoners at a later date. Hawkins’s men who showed up to await exchange at Jackson and Trenton in January 1863 were sent by rail first to St. Louis and then to Camp Chase, Ohio. Despite the colonel’s entreaties for an early exchange of his men, the government did not release the Tennesseans until summer 1863, when they reported to Saulsbury, east of Grand Junction. In February the 6th Tennessee’s adjutant reported that a number of the regiment’s men awaited exchange at Camp Lew Wallace, that “some [were] absent at their homes sick and some absent without leave.” Since “all company books and records” had been left at Trenton in November 1862 and captured in December, he believed it impossible to know “the exact whereabouts of the absent and the day they left.”34 33. Catton, Grant Moves South, 336–37, 342; Jomini quoted in Mackey, Uncivil War, 11–12; Beringer et al., Why the South Lost, 170–71; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 166–69. 34. William B. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in Civil War Psychology (New York, 1930), 31–33; OR, ser. 2, 4:266–68; TICW, 1:337; Hawkins to Johnson, Aug. 9, 1863, PAJ, 6:322–23; 6th Tennessee, CSR.

CHAPTER 4

Between the Battles

G

eneral Bragg regrouped his battered Army of Tennessee on January 3, 1863, at Tullahoma on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, thirty-five miles southeast of the Stones River battlefield. General Rosecrans encamped his Army of the Cumberland in and around Murfreesboro, with some supporting troops at Nashville and outposts along the Cumberland River at Fort Donelson, Clarksville, Gallatin, and Carthage. For now Old Rosy felt “winter rains made the country roads impassable for large military operations.” Meanwhile he and his generals “hardened . . . cavalry, drilled . . . infantry, fortified Nashville and Murfreesboro for secondary depots, and arranged . . . plans for the coming campaign.” As well, according to Union cavalry historian Stephen Z. Starr, “he begged, he pleaded, he lectured, he exhorted, and [even] hectored” Washington for more mounted “regiments . . . , firearms . . . , saddles and horse gear, and for more horses.” When the War Department could not meet his demands for horses expeditiously, it granted him authority to mount five thousand of his infantrymen with impressed horses from the countryside.1 In January the 1st and 4th Tennessee slogged through inclement weather to Nashville from Louisville by different routes: Edwards via Lexington and Johnson due south via Glasgow. Each left behind his multiplying sick and dead in Ohio and Kentucky. The 1st Tennessee’s Lt. J. L. Brown of Cleveland, Tennessee, lingered with typhoid fever at Camp Dennison until succumbing on January 3. The few worldly goods he left behind for his brother included a “pair of pants, 1 pocket knife,” a blanket, and “one dollar & eighteen cents in money.”2 1. William S. Rosecrans, “From Tullahoma to Chattanooga,” in Cozzens and Girardi, New Annals, 412; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:208–9, 211. 2. J. L. Brown, 1st Tennessee, CSR; Carter, First Regiment, 275–331; RAGT, 389–415.

70

Beginnings

Parson Brownlow, who saw his son, James, and Robert Johnson ride out of Louisville on January 13, commented that the 1st Tennessee was “a fine Regiment . . . , number[ing] 980.” But the men rode “wild and fresh horses, not sufficiently drilled to go into battle,” and he felt that, until they underwent further training, that the unit should remain at Nashville. He was also concerned about schemers in the regiment such as Maj. William R. Tracy of Chattanooga, who was “keeping up . . . bad feeling[s].”3 Johnson’s cavalry rode out shortly before a great snowstorm swept across the state, the “deepest in twenty years,” claimed Kentuckians. While the Tennesseans camped at Bardstown’s fairground, the storm dumped twenty-six inches of snow, resulting in increased sickness and the deaths of three troopers. Then “bad roads and high waters” delayed their journey. At Munfordville Johnson shipped ahead by rail the regiment’s sick along with its tents and other equipment. On January 28 his weary men plodded slowly into Nashville one day behind Edwards’s troops. Expecting his son’s regiment, Governor Johnson “had new tents put up . . . with a bountiful supply of clean straw in each one, picket-ropes stretched, and plenty of wood for cooking . . . , nothing was left undone that would add to the comfort of the men.” But they had little time for comfort: On February 1 Brownlow led a two-company advance for Brig. Gen. James B. Steedman’s foot soldiers, marching well behind the trotting horseman toward Franklin. Both arrived too late to intercept Rebels heading toward a futile attempt to retake Fort Donelson. After returning from Franklin with “their horses . . . nearly all barefooted,” four other Tory companies, again under Brownlow’s command, pursued 150 mounted Rebels following an attack on one of Steedman’s forage trains near Nolensville.4 The Kentucky snowstorm scattered Edwards’s men over several miles before they concentrated at Horse Cave, just north at Glasgow. Sadly some companies had been ordered to turn in their tents before leaving Louisville, so the men stayed for days in “abandoned houses, stables and barns.” When the flakes stopped they “whiled away the time catching rabbits” in the snow. Reaching the Cumberland River at Nashville, they found only the railroad bridge with flooring to cross. Dismounted in a single file, they led their horses over the span. All made it across except for one unmanageable pack mule 3. Brownlow to Johnson, Jan. 17, 1863, PAJ, 6:121–22. 4. Carter, First Regiment, 65–66, 324–25; OR, 23(1):30, 50, 23(2):20.

Between the Battles

71

that tumbled fifty feet to its death. Edwards’s forlorn horsemen rode up to the capitol, perched above the city, then stood in formation in a freezing rain for four hours awaiting tents. Finally they learned that they would be temporarily quartered at the courthouse. Unfortunately they found it “mud knee deep around” the outside and inside “well stocked with insects and vermin.”5 The East Tennessee cavalry regiments remained near Murfreesboro or Nashville while Stokes’s 5th fought and foraged east of Murfreesboro. General Stanley attached Johnson’s 1st to serve as the eyes and ears of Steedman’s Third Infantry Division southwest of Nashville. He assigned Ray’s 2nd, Pickens’s 3rd, and Stokes’s 5th to Colonel Minty’s cavalry brigade stationed a short distance from Murfreesboro. Edwards’s 4th remained unattached at Nashville, undergoing training and awaiting cavalry weapons. Overall the Confederate cavalry—numbering from about nine thousand to fifteen thousand men from January to June—outmanned Stanley’s horsemen from three to one in the winter to two to one in the early spring, causing Rosecrans to have infantry accompany the cavalry. Bragg stationed half of his mounted forces at Columbia, under the command of Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, a forty-two-year-old “small, elegant” Mississippian with an eye for the ladies. The other half remained with Wheeler at McMinnville.6 Toward the end of February, Steedman—a large, strong man with “an aggressive temperament”—moved his division ten miles to Triune, a crossroads village named for the Godhead. He ordered Colonel Johnson and the 1st Tennessee ahead to scout south of the village. Instead of going himself, Johnson, as was his habit, deployed a detachment under Lieutenant Colonel Brownlow. Riding out at night, Brownlow forded the Harpeth River and found only small enemy squads toward Chapel Hill. As Brownlow returned at dawn near the Harpeth, graycoats concealed along the pike fired, yelled, and rushed his rearguard, hoping to panic the entire column. But he quickly formed a line of battle and fired volley after volley. As the Johnny Rebs fell back, Brownlow led a saber charge—as would become his practice—that broke through their line. He then pursued them for three miles. Brownlow returned to camp with about a hundred prisoners, some with saber wounds. Subsequently the 1st Ten5. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 24–25; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 6; Meshack Stephens to Blackman, Feb. 20, 1863, Luther Meade Blackman Papers, TSLA. 6. TICW, 1:319, 322, 327, 330; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 794, 867; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:224–25.

72

Beginnings

nessee received a written commendation from Steedman “for gallantry on the field.”7 Steedman established a well-fortified earthwork fort—designed to withstand “a force of 10,000”—with rifle pits to its front backed by a ten-gun battery at the junction of the Nolensville and Franklin pikes, three-quarters of mile north of Triune. Johnson’s men with their horses camped another mile toward Franklin “opposite a brick school-house.” As the Ohio general’s only cavalry support, Johnson’s troops, as one recalled, found themselves “constantly in the saddle and on the go night and day, picketing, foraging, scouting and skirmishing.” In actions from February to May, when Brownlow officially took command, the lieutenant colonel always commanded the regiment in the field. Meanwhile Robert Johnson imbibed heavily, especially after the death of his older brother Charles, an assistant surgeon for the 10th Tennessee Infantry, due to a riding accident. Rosecrans wrote to Governor Johnson that “Robert has been drinking so as to become a subject to remark everywhere,” that the general had “told him . . . to stop,” and that Robert had “promised he would.” In May, at the governor’s suggestion, Rosecrans detached the colonel from his regiment to raise an entire brigade of cavalry. Failing at this, Robert Johnson resigned from the army and became his father’s private secretary.8 While the 1st Tennessee camped at Triune from March to June, detachments from Wheeler’s cavalry, mostly Alabama horsemen at Chapel Hill, fifteen miles to the south, fired on the regiment’s pickets almost daily. Brownlow often responded by forming a line of battle beyond his camp, then with a small detachment under his personal command swung with as little sound as possible toward the enemy’s rear. Once in position he led a “drawn sabers charge” directly into the Rebels’ line, “creating the wildest confusion and disorder.” Often he captured more prisoners than he had men. It was while at Triune, wrote Sgt. William Carter, that Brownlow’s boys “became famous for dash and courage,” earning for themselves the name of “the fighting First Tennessee Cavalry.” During the spring and summer, the lieutenant colonel’s proud father, Parson Brownlow, remained in Nashville as a U.S. Treasury agent.9 7. Carter, First Regiment, 67–69; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 794; Larry L. Miller, Tennessee Place Names (Bloomington, Ind., 2001), 209. 8. Carter, First Regiment, 72; Rosecrans to Johnson, Apr. 12, 1863, PAJ, 6:211; Johnson to Robert Johnson, May 22, 1863, ibid., 207n; Nashville Daily Union, Apr. 5, 1863; OR, 23(1):127, 141, 186, 23(2):115. 9. Carter, First Regiment, 70–72; Coulter, William G. Brownlow, 246.

Between the Battles

73

James Brownlow suffered a few losses during the spring. While leading two companies on April 16, he suffered five casualties attempting to destroy an enemy forage train at Rigg’s Crossroads. Of four wounded, “two received three wounds each . . . thought mortal, but being blessed with strong constitutions and . . . good nursing, they . . . recovered.” Wheeler’s horsemen killed two of Brownlow’s men and wounded three at College Grove on May 8. As he rode with “a fat turkey strapped to his saddle,” Pvt. Robert Hixon of Company C was “slightly wounded in [the] left cheek and captured.” He had hoped to present the turkey to Colonel Brownlow. When Wheeler heard of this, he sent a message to Brownlow “that he had one of his men and a turkey prisoners,” promising to “take care of his man, but [to] dine on his turkey that day.”10 The 1st Tennessee experienced fewer combat losses than those due to illness during the first half of 1863, when disease claimed 75 men. The regiment’s historian attributes the “high death-rate [to] exposure during the cold wet months of winter and spring,” when the men were “constantly in the saddle night and day.” Eventually 238 of the regiment’s men would die from disease during the war, compared to only 65 dying of their wounds. This ratio was about twice as high for those dying of disease in all Tennessee Union regiments as that for those killed in action.11 Religion provided consolation to many in the 1st Tennessee. Sergeant Carter claimed that “no regiment in the service was more religiously inclined” than the 1st. This derived from the nature of its men and its leaders, especially Brownlow, the son of a preacher, and John P. Holtsinger, “its worthy chaplain.” Holtsinger, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister from Greeneville, was “the idol of his men.” According to Carter, “his meetings were always largely attended and of the most devout character.” Such a regiment would not abide the antics of its own divisive Major Tracy and his friend Alf Burnett. On “a Sunday spree” in early May 1863, according to an Ohio soldier, the two held a mock service, “forming the regiment in a hollow square . . . with Burnett doing the preaching.” After presenting his text, “And the Whangdoodle mourneth for its first born and fleeth to Mount Hepsidan,” he preached a “take-off of a frontier sermon.” But his listeners, many of whom were “piously disposted,” were not amused. They were “so infuriated by the sacrilege that they booted both offenders out of camp and told them never to return.” After Tracy apolo10. Carter, First Regiment, 71. 11. Ibid., 71–72, 260, 275–331.

74

Beginnings

gized to the regiment for another such incident in March, Brownlow failed to forgive him and pushed Tracy into resigning.12 Lt. John W. Andes of the 2nd Tennessee remembered that many “lived and died religious, while . . . a large percent grew reckless and wicked.” Among the god fearing were the Sevier County family men of Company M, many of whom offered “prayers in their tents before retiring at night.” Lacking a chaplain, the 3rd Tennessee did not seem, at least as a regiment, to have placed any emphasis on religion. A handful of its officers were ministers, including Maj. Albert C. Catlett, who showed their faith through piety, patience, and bravery. Another such man was Presbyterian elder Sgt. John A. McCulloch, a trooper “respected and loved” by his entire regiment. Although known as “a good swimmer, he suddenly floundered and sunk” while bathing in the Cumberland River on June 22, 1863. Maj. Will A. McTeer recalled that the sergeant was “one of the few men who took his religion into camps with him and kept it there in his daily walks.”13 Early in January, because the railroad from Nashville had been torn up during the recent battle, Rosecrans placed his entire army on half rations. This proved difficult enough for infantry, but the cavalry still had to continue guarding, scouting, and foraging. Since their camp equipage had been captured during the Stones River campaign, the men of Ray’s 2nd Tennessee also had to live in the open without tents for about four weeks on low, wet ground. “Our men were dying almost daily,” wrote Lieutenant Andes. To help secure Rosecrans’s army, the 2nd and 3rd went on extended scouts with their long muskets to such places as Nolensville, Triune, and Eaglesville. To acquire food for the army, they along with infantry accompanied forage trains into the surrounding countryside.14 By late January Stanley had equipped the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee with cavalry arms and equipment. He issued the men of the 3rd “Sharp’s carbines, Remington’s revolvers, and the ordinary cavalry sabers” taken from the temporarily imprisoned troopers of the 15th Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter Ray’s 2nd received similar weapons. Before February the army mustered in the two regiments, the 2nd with “twelve full companies” and the 3rd with only five 12. Ibid., 265–72; George W. Landrum quoted in Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis, 1951), 263; PAJ, 5:140n; Memorial from Union League Council, Nov. 10, 1863, ibid., 6:466–67; William R. Tracy, 1st Tennessee, CSR. 13. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 53, 57, 59, 240, 254. 14. Ibid., 42.

Between the Battles

75

companies, really no more than a battalion. Despite the 3rd Tennessee’s small size of only about three hundred men, Rosecrans in early February transferred forty-four of its members, earlier recruited for the 1st Tennessee, to Johnson’s regiment. This was undoubtedly a result of past competition for troops. Pickens’s small 3rd Tennessee recruited four more companies during 1863, mostly from the Third Congressional District in the southernmost part of East Tennessee, and two more during 1864.15 Many of the men of the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee came under fire for the first time when Minty’s brigade scouted from Murfreesboro to Unionville on January 11. With Colonel Pickens’s 3rd leading the charge at Middleton, the brigade captured forty-one Rebels of Maj. DeWitt C. Douglass’s cavalry battalion, including its commander. Reportedly the men of the regiment “pressed the enemy with all the vigor of old soldiers.” When Major Catlett, an officer of several exploits, somehow got separated from his command, “he met eight rebels, armed and equipped.” Not wanting to “lamely surrender,” but wondering where to run, he almost without thinking “present[ed] a revolver [and] commanded them to lay down their arms and surrender.” They obeyed his order before he single-handedly marched them as prisoners of war back to his regiment.16 Francis M. McClain and John McClain, “intelligent, fine looking,” and agreeable young men claiming to be from Monroe County, enlisted in Company A, 2nd Tennessee. They became “something of favorites” with the regiment, especially because of their musical talent. In the evenings the two drew “crowds . . . to witness their dancing and fiddling.” To all indications these young musicians enjoyed the life of a soldier more than did anyone else in the regiment. But while together on picket at an outpost on the night of March 20, they vanished. Then about sunrise the enemy attacked the other pickets in force.17 Minty ordered out his entire brigade, with the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee in a field on the front line. Then he sent the 3rd to the right on a wooded hill “just in time” to fire a volley at yelling, charging graybacks, forcing them back “along an opposite ridge.” For over an hour each side stood its ground, firing too high to cause much damage. One enemy group passed to the Federals’ rear 15. Ibid., 42–44; TICW, 1:321, 324–25; ORS, 65:457. 16. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:210–11; OR, 23(1):25–27; RAGT, 386; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 47. 17. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 47–49.

76

Beginnings

but was repulsed by the 4th Indiana. Finally when two Illinois infantry regiments supported by a battery arrived, the Rebel force retreated. Altogether each side suffered only a handful of casualties. But the lesson to the men of the 2nd Tennessee was that the McClain boys were “spies. . . to lead Wheeler’s forces into [their] camps . . . by surprise.” The McClains represented only two of several enemy spies behind Rosecrans’s line at this time. Others included a so-called Yankee singing-master found to have concealed “a complete map of . . . fortifications . . . under a false sole” in one of his shoes and two spies at Franklin arrested for impersonating officers of the “inspector-general’s department.”18 On April 9 Colonel Ray, now commanding a brigade, left his camp near Murfreesboro with his 2nd Tennessee and a detachment of the 4th Indiana on a scout toward Franklin. The next morning troopers of Van Dorn’s cavalry attacked Ray’s command in force near an old mill at a ford crossing the Big Harpeth River. In an hour-long skirmish, “mostly at long range,” Ray lost one man killed and six wounded before “the enemy fell back.” Returning to Murfreesboro with General Stanley on the thirteenth, the cavalry chief sought “to burn down every house that [had] a rebel member in Dick McCann’s force,” an assortment of area regulars and irregulars who derailed trains, robbed mail couriers, and cut telegraph lines. Unfortunately the general’s cavalry, including Ray’s brigade, often burned all homes with “sons in the Confederate Army.”19 Because of disruptions in rail service caused by enemy horsemen, such as those of McCann, Stanley assigned a 3rd Tennessee detachment in April to help man a courier service from Murfreesboro to Nashville. In May he transferred Pickens’s regiment to Nashville and assigned it full responsibility for the courier line. While some horsemen served as couriers, others hunted for guerrillas and bushwhackers that harassed them. Pickens’s men established relay stations at houses or barns about every four miles. Six couriers could make the run one way in about two hours. Approximately fifty troopers serviced the stations twenty-four hours a day.20 After camping for weeks near St. Cecelia Convent, north of the capitol, the 3rd moved to Jefferson Street, near “bawdy houses and liquor shops,” where soldiers engaged in what they dubbed “horizontal refreshment.” On July 9 18. Ibid.; R. W. Johnson, Soldier’s Reminiscences, 219–20. 19. TICW, 1:322; OR, 23(1):20–23, 237, 240, 23(2):71, 236. 20. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 52–53; W. L. Curry, Four Years in the Saddle: History of the First Regiment Ohio Volunteer Cavalry (Columbus, 1898), 370.

Between the Battles

77

Brig. Gen. James Morgan, commanding at Nashville, rounded up and shipped north more than a hundred prostitutes on the recently built Idahoe, under the command of Capt. John Newcomb. But when Louisville and then Cincinnati refused to let the women land, Secretary of War Stanton ordered their steamer back to Nashville. In fall 1863 Provost Marshal George Spalding, a Michigan schoolteacher turned soldier and later commander of the 12th Tennessee Cavalry, instituted legalized prostitution, requiring the ladies of the evening to obtain a license and to undergo regular medical examinations for venereal diseases.21 Soldiers discovered numerous ways of avoiding restrictions on the purchase of whiskey. To disguise a clandestine liquor shop, a few thirsty men of the 3rd Tennessee raised a hospital flag over “an old . . . dilapidated house.” They then spread word that it housed smallpox patients.22 While drunkenness and venereal disease exacted a toll on soldiers, other contributors affected even the most religious. During the first half of 1863, more than a hundred men from the 2nd Tennessee and about fifty from the 3rd Tennessee died of noncombat-related causes. Sickness struck some companies and families more severely than others. Company M, 2nd Tennessee lost twenty-one men, mostly from Sevier County, including four brothers each from families named Webb and Trotter.23 Frank H. Hamilton, medical inspector for the Department of the Cumberland, found Tennesseans to have more scurvy than those from elsewhere. He noted that they needed “fresh vegetables, especially potatoes, lime juice & pickled cabbage.” Hamilton commented on some regiments at Nashville individually in June 1863. For example, Col. Alvan C. Gillem’s 10th Tennessee Infantry comprising 790 men had “16 sick in the field hospital; 17 in quarters.” But the results were considerably worse for two cavalry regiments. The 3rd Tennessee had 472 troopers, of whom 7 were in the field hospital and 44 in their quarters. Since January, according to its muster roll, 48 of the 3rd’s men had died from sickness. The 4th Tennessee, with 600 cavalrymen, suffered similar losses.24 When Edwards’s 4th Tennessee reached Nashville in January 1863, the regi21. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 53, 55; Clint Johnson, Civil War Blunders (Winston-Salem, N.C., 1997), 182–85. 22. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 56. 23. Ibid., 57–59, 330–86. 24. Hamilton to Johnson, June 9, 1863, PAJ, 6:241–42.

78

Beginnings

ment had only two full companies. Edwards consolidated eight others partially filled into three more full companies. This created a battalion, which eventually engaged in “post and scout service” until September 1863. As one trooper remembered, “It was drill, drill, drill, with an occasional dash into the country after bushwhackers.” On February 28 the regiment received its first pay: thirteen dollars a month for a private. Into the spring the men still lacked arms other than old muskets. When weapons finally arrived, each man received a Gallagher carbine, a Remington pistol, and a saber.25 Around the time the 4th’s men thought they had achieved “pretty good discipline,” Edwards appointed Henry C. Kerner, a regular-army man from the North, as adjutant. The Tennesseans were outraged; some even procured a rail to ride him out of camp. But their officers persuaded them to give him a chance. On the drill ground Kerner issued plain instructions and clear commands. Once calling “at ease,” he described his fourteen years in the army, including “how he had fought the Indians.” He also offered a few suggestions on being a good cavalryman. From that day forward he was “the idol of the regiment.”26 During June and July 1863, a series of events led to the resignation of Colonel Edwards: his endorsement of a speech by Congressman Samuel S. Cox of Ohio opposing Lincoln’s war policies, a quarrel and struggle with one of the regimental surgeons, and an Edwards-instigated counter-petition supporting him by 360 enlisted men. Also hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles was the loyalty oath earlier passed by Congress that appeared to bar him from being an officer since he once served in the Rebel legislature. But in a regimental election promised by the governor, the 4th chose Jacob M. Thornburgh, a favorite of Edwards, as their commander.27 Having recruited three additional companies in August, the regiment in September received an opportunity to break the boredom of Camp Spears by reinforcing Murfreesboro. The men wished to free East Tennessee but that was not to be. Writing later, the regiment’s historian, Cpl. Alexander Eckel, thought it all for the best since his comrades “would have wreaked vengeance,” getting “into serious trouble and [bringing] disgrace on their regiment.” At 25. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 26, 29; TICW, 1:327; RAGT, 415. 26. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 30–31. 27. Officers of Fourth Tenn. Cav. to Johnson, June 5, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 25–28; Lately Thomas, The First President Johnson (New York, 1968), 253; Edwards to Johnson, June 6, 1863, PAJ, 6:239–40.

Between the Battles

79

Murfreesboro the men camped north of the town near a large spring, sharing their space with “wharf rats” the size of “squirrels.” Here they scouted in detachments for guerrillas and stragglers from Bragg’s army.28 Perturbed by the failure to redeem East Tennessee and the related matter of snail-paced recruitment, Johnson sought troops elsewhere during spring 1863. He obtained authority from Secretary Stanton to enlist soldiers from the North with the permission of their states’ governors. In mid-April Johnson appointed northern recruiters to consult with his fellow chief executives. Initially the plan failed because of the specificity for troop usage in East Tennessee, disliked by the War Department and by most governors. Beyond this barrier, another hurdle loomed when Lincoln announced additional troop quotas for other states. Finally in June Stanton retracted the original authority granted Johnson.. To avoid Stanton’s retraction, Johnson had hundreds of volunteers in New York and Pennsylvania travel as “emigrants” to Tennessee. During August two cavalry regiments that included these northerners began organizing at Nashville. For commanders, Johnson appointed former congressman George W. Bridges of Athens (for the 10th Tennessee) and Nashville’s provost marshal, George Spalding (for the 12th Tennessee). Some others commissioned as officers for the 12th had served previously in northern regiments or in the 4th U.S. Cavalry. Eventually about half of the 12th Tennessee and as many as a fifth of the 10th hailed from other states; most of the 10th hailed from lower East Tennessee, especially McMinn and Bradley counties.29 Both regiments recruited some men from northern Alabama. Capt. John A. Miller of Company M, 12th Tennessee enrolled sixty-six at Decatur “as reenlistments from [the] 1st Alabama Cavalry.” Recruits for the 10th Tennessee included George and Jasper Ridge, brothers from Doran’s Cove near Bridgeport. Their father, William “Old Yankee Bill” Ridge had wanted his sons to join the Union army before being drafted by the Confederates. A number of the boys’ uncles and cousins had enlisted in the 10th too. George, a political prisoner at nearby Chattanooga, escaped and fled to Nashville to join Jasper 28. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 25–26, 29–30; TICW, 1:327; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 7. 29. Johnson to Elize Johnson, Mar. 27, 1863, PAJ, 6:195–97; Stanton to Johnson, Apr. 15, 1863, ibid., 211–12; Authorization for Raising Troops, Apr. 29, 1863, ibid., 218–19; Jesse E. Peyton to Johnson, June 12, 1863, ibid., 247–48; Thomas B. W. Stockton to Johnson, June 21, 1863, ibid., 263– 64; Johnson to Ernest M. Bement, June 23, 1863, ibid., 270–71; Bement to Johnson, June 30, 1863, ibid., 280–81; ibid., 302n; Bement to Johnson, June 22, 1863, Johnson Papers, LC; TICW, 1:344–45, 349; BDAC, 596, 1634; Nashville Dispatch, June 7, 1863.

80

Beginnings

and other relatives in the regiment. Later, after the murder of his father and another brother named James, George sought to protect his own wife and children by becoming a regimental recruiter at Bridgeport.30 A substantial number of the 10th’s men were Rebel deserters: some driven south with Bragg’s army, others taken prisoner at Vicksburg, and a number who simply gave up on the Confederacy. Many were from Georgia or North Carolina. Brothers Jasper and Jason Adkins enlisted in Company G, 39th Georgia Infantry in March 1862 at Ellijay. They were paroled after Vicksburg and went home but “never returned to [their] Regiment.” Instead they joined Company D, 10th Tennessee Cavalry (USA) on January 1, 1864, Jasper as a sergeant and Jason as a corporal, both apparently receiving credit for prior military experience. “When the Rebels began conscripting,” Ennos Brown of Hiawassee, who had not wanted to serve in any man’s army, “grabbed an axe and chopped off his big toe to keep out of the Army but the Confederates took him anyway” into the 65th Georgia Infantry. But after he deserted at Loudon, Tennessee, in June 1863, he later also volunteered for the 10th.31 During their first few months after mustering, the 10th and 12th guarded the construction of the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad, running west of Nashville to the Tennessee River. Before the war twenty-eight miles of the line immediately west of the capital had been almost completed and all but eight miles graded to Reynoldsbury (soon renamed Johnsonville) on the river. West of the Tennessee River, it had been constructed to the east as far as Trenton. Following lengthy appeals, Governor Johnson received full authority to complete it with military support in August 1863. The route offered advantages over the thrice as long, guerrilla-infested Louisville to Nashville route and the often unnavigable Cumberland River.32 The 12th Tennessee escorted the 10th Tennessee Infantry in October 1863 on a march just north of the Cumberland River in Cheatham County to impress five thousand blacks for work on the railroad. The 12th had two companies at Charlotte in December and added four other companies in February 30. Margaret M. Storey, Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 2004), 133–34. 31. Copy of Adkins’s and Brown’s files from Pension Bureau (as well as those of others), Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library. 32. Walter T. Durham, Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union, July 1, 1863, to June 30, 1865 (Nashville, 1987), 25–26; Hall, Andrew Johnson, 197–98; OR, 30(3):184–85, 31(3):14; Nashville Daily Union, Sept. 2, 20, 1863.

Between the Battles

81

1864 at Station No. 51 to protect the railroad from “numerous bands of guerrillas.” On his own authority Lt. Col. James W. Scully, an Irish-born, Gallatinreared, regular-army man commanding the 10th Tennessee Infantry at Dickson, mounted forty-two of his men. He then impressed all surplus horses in the “vicinity to prevent them being used against [him].”33 An episode in November 1863 reflected badly on the men of the 10th Tennessee Cavalry. One of its foraging detachments visited Bellevue, home of John Harding Jr. After firing a shot or two in the yard announcing their arrival, the men raided the henhouse and gathered the garden vegetables. Then they rode off with these as well as some food from the table. They returned two days later for the family’s milk and butter. This time they threatened Harding’s life when he refused to cook them a meal. Harding, who had been assessed to feed Nashville’s poor, complained to the brigadier general in charge at the time, giving him the names of the detail’s officer and its sergeant. One Sunday morning a month later, the Hardings’ mansion along the bluffs of the Cumberland “mysteriously burned.”34 In addition to the appeal for northern recruits, existing Tennessee regiments sought repentant Rebels. It had long been known that many individuals conscripted against their will were unwilling participants. Given the choice of prison or service in the Union army, some would undoubtedly choose the latter. Some commanders of congested prisons in the North had already released prisoners agreeing to serve in Union regiments before Washington issued any general instructions in this regard. On June 20 Secretary Stanton directed that when an individual could “reliably” state that he was “impressed into the rebel service and that he now wish[ed] in good faith to join our army, he may be permitted to do so on his taking the oath of allegiance.”35 During early June at Camp Morton, fifty Tennessee prisoners enlisted in the 71st Indiana Infantry and 155 joined Stokes’s 5th Tennessee. Escorted on June 13 by a squad from the 71st Indiana, the two groups of recruits marched through the streets of Indianapolis to Union Station. There they boarded a train for Middle Tennessee. The 5th Tennessee’s “Galvanized Yankees” (as they came to be called) helped make up Company L, which was mustered in at 33. Alvan C. Gillem to Governor’s Guard Captains, Sept. 20, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; TICW, 1:349; RAGT, 602; ORS, 65:593–94; Scully to Johnson, Oct. 25, 1863, PAJ, 6:436–38; Nashville Daily Union, Oct. 3, 1863. 34. Wills, Belle Meade, 122. 35. Dee Alexander Brown, The Galvanized Yankees (Urbana, 1963), 64–65.

82

Beginnings

Carthage in August. Such men also filled losses in other companies. Although these were probably the first group of Rebel prisoners to enter a Tennessee Union cavalry regiment, large numbers of ex-Confederate soldiers would follow later in the year with formation of the 13th Tennessee. Throughout the war other individuals in small numbers abandoned the Confederate cause and entered the Federal army.36 Of the first four Union cavalry regiments raised in East Tennessee, desertions numbered the most in Edwards’s 4th during 1862 and 1863, perhaps caused by infighting within its officers’ ranks and its months of near idleness at Nashville. Ray’s 2nd also had most of its desertions happen early in the war, with several deserters occasionally leaving together on the same day, likely for some particular reason. For example, eleven men of Company A deserted on August 10, 1862, during a period of starvation at Cumberland Gap, and ten from Company G left on November 12, 1862, during a severe outbreak of measles within the regiment. During 1862 and 1863, Brownlow’s 1st, with regular skirmishing during spring 1863, and Pickens’s 3rd, with courier duties at the same time, reported only about a third as many deserters. Most of those from all four companies left to stay.37 Except for the 1st Tennessee, the first four regiments saw little action during the first five months of 1863. For the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tennessee, this time was primarily a period of training and waiting spelled by an occasional pursuit of guerrillas in the countryside. The 3rd engaged in its courier duties, while the 4th witnessed severe infighting among its officers that finally deposed Colonel Edwards and replaced him with Thornburgh. Under the command of Colonel Brownlow, Robert Johnson’s successor, the 1st became a capable regiment known to its men and others as “The Fighting First.” During these five months, all four regiments suffered severely from disease aggravated by life in the outdoors.38 By mid-1863 Nashville was a “bustling, overcrowded city . . . , a major supply base and [military] staging area [and] a gathering place for the displaced.” Its narrow streets and dirty hotels had more than their share of “confidence 36. TICW 1:330; Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 114. 37. RAGT, 302–415; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 22, 38, 52–53. 38. PAJ, 6:xxxiii–xxxvii, 199n; Gillem to Johnson, Jan. 7, Mar. 11, 13, 1864, ibid., 540–43, 643– 45, 645–47; TAGO files, June 1863–Aug. 1864, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Maslowski, Treason Must Be Made Odious, 40–41.

Between the Battles

83

men and . . . , women who followed the drum,” and practitioners of “intrigue and espionage.” Tories stationed there—such as the men of the 3rd and 4th Tennessee and the 10th Tennessee Infantry—represented only a fraction of the city’s population. But they had their champion and protector in Governor Johnson, who had Colonel Gillem’s infantrymen detached in May to form the nucleus around which to build a “governor’s guard” responsible directly to him. In June Johnson appointed Gillem, a West Point graduate and regulararmy officer from Jackson County—as state adjutant general. During the next two years, the adjutant general’s office would assist the governor with recruiting, organizing, and reorganizing regiments; considering complaints about bounties and the pay and conduct of officers; and having Tory troopers detached for special assignments, such as supervising elections and guarding the building of the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad.39 39. Connelly to wife, Feb. 15, 1863, in James A. Connolly, Three Year in the Army of the Cumberland: The Letters and Diary of Major James A. Connolly, ed. Paul M. Angle (Bloomington, Ind., 1959), 34;

PART 2

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

”I was . . . assigned to my command Col. Bill Stokes regiment of Cavalry, who had been recruited from the natives in that vicinity [Carthage]. They had many old grievances to reclaim, and were under little or no discipline.” Brig. Gen. George Crook

Maj. Gen. George Crook From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 5

Out of Murfreesboro

F

ollowing Stones River, General Bragg at Tullahoma spread his front twenty miles south of Murfreesboro along a railroad branch running west from Wartrace to Shelbyville. With cavalry on his flanks as well as providing couriers, pickets, and scouts, his infantry protected four passes through the Highland Rim. General Rosecrans remained at Murfreesboro, 220 miles from his Louisville supply base. Despite prodding by their superiors during the spring, the generals remained stationary for almost six months. Washington politicians joked of Rosecrans’s having “a spring vegetable garden at Murfreesboro.” In truth Rosecrans spent much of his time pleading for more horses and mules to forage the countryside. Both armies sent detachments seeking information as well as more mounts, food, and fodder.1 From January to mid-June 1863, numerous expeditions, reconnaissance missions, and skirmishes occurred within thirty miles of Murfreesboro, some even farther away. At least nine expeditions and nine reconnaissance patrols including cavalry marched out of Murfreesboro, usually east toward Liberty or west toward Franklin. The Federals often searched for horses and fodder as well as for the enemy. Of approximately fifty skirmishes, half happened east toward Liberty and others occurred mostly along picket lines to the west or south of Murfreesboro. Almost a third originated with Confederate cavalry incursions stretching as far west as Fort Donelson and as far east as Gallatin. Altogether each side suffered about three thousand casualties.2 1. Stanley, Memoirs, 130–31, 143–44; Dubose, Wheeler, 174; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:208–10; Hagerman, American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare, 209, 210. 2. E. B. Long and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 (New York, 1971), 311–67.

88

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

During the first half of 1863, Stokes’s 5th Tennessee served in battalions led by Lt. Col. Robert Galbraith and Maj. John Murphy, in one or two companies or a small squad, or acted as individual scouts or spies. From March until June Galbraith’s battalion encamped at Murfreesboro and Murphy’s at Carthage on the Cumberland River. Detachments from each generally fought east of Murfreesboro and south of Carthage at such places as Bradyville, Milton, and Liberty. They also foraged and impressed horses in the same vicinity. According to John Fitch, the earliest historian of the Army of the Cumberland, Stokes’s regiment “rendered important service, particularly by furnishing a large proportion of the guides and scouts necessary for the various expeditions that [were] continually sent into the adjacent country.”3 From his sick bed in January 1863, Stokes still complained about Henry Newberry. Rosecrans had detached the lieutenant to serve as his chief of couriers. As such Newberry used one of the former congressman’s companies as couriers and other members of the regiment as orderlies. Twice the colonel threatened to resign rather than “submit [to] such a man.” That same month, in the regiment’s election of a major, Stokes charged one of the candidates, Capt. Eli G. Fleming of Company F, with being absent without leave when the officer visited his family in Warren County. Convinced that he lost the election because of the colonel, the enraged young captain shot Stokes in the leg during a heated exchange. Fleming was summarily arrested, court-martialed, and given the death penalty. Because of Fleming’s sterling record as a scout and officer, however, Rosecrans, who considered him a “daring, active, and efficient officer,” shocked the colonel by reducing the captain’s sentence to a court-martial. Later the Warren County soldier resumed his former activities as guide and scout for other regiments in the army.4 In early March Colonel Stokes faced a court-martial trial himself at Nashville on charges made by Newberry and other young officers of the 5th Tennessee. Although Rosecrans agreed with them that Stokes had “a spirit of harshness and tyranny, not at all conducive to discipline,” he was acquitted. Actually the colonel was lenient with enlisted men, being “in the habit,” for example, “of giving the boys leave to go home & make arrangements for their families.” On March 12 the Nashville City Council, as a sign of support, presented Stokes 3. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 15–24; TICW, 1:330; ORS, 65:497, 501; John Fitch, Annals of the Army of the Cumberland (Philadelphia, 1863), 214; RAGT, 442. 4. Stokes to Johnson, Jan. 19, 1863, PAJ, 6:124.

Out of Murfreesboro

89

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Middle Tennessee

with a stand of colors for the 5th Tennessee. Two days later he resigned, presumably because of “ill-health.” In April at Rosecrans’s request, Newberry resigned, and Stokes, “at the earnest request of [others],” wrote Fitch, “again assumed command.”5 From March until June 1863, Brig. Gen. George Crook, a West Pointer and Indian fighter in the Pacific Northwest, commanded at Carthage. There he watched for John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry should it threaten the left of Rosecrans’s army. Crook had several woes: a severe liver ailment, uncontrollable mountaineer soldiers, and hungry “contraband women.” In addition to his own Ohio infantry brigade, he inherited what he called “mauvaise sauvages”— Kentuckians who stole the churches’ “valuables” and raided the town’s “henhouses” along with “Old Jim Spears’s . . . perfectly lawless” East Tennessee infantry brigade. For cavalry, which he requested, Crook received Murphy’s battalion from Stokes’s regiment, composed of “natives in that vicinity.” He found these Tennesseans had “many old grievances to reclaim, and were under 5. Stokes to Johnson, Mar. 5, 1863, ibid., 162–63; ibid., 39n; Nashville Dispatch, Jan. 25, 1863; Durham, Nashville, 227–28, 231; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 214; Andrew Maynard to Stokes, Aug. 31, 1886, William B. Stokes Papers, TSLA.

90

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

little or no discipline.” But Stokes and his men possessed other qualities, such as “good facilities for obtaining information,” as one Union major commented.6 Stokes and his regiment often supported Col. John Thomas Wilder’s brigade before and after the mounting of those Indianans. Although denied a request to enlist more cavalry regiments, the War Department allowed Rosecrans to mount up to five thousand infantrymen with impressed horses. While under orders to destroy gristmills supplying the graycoats, Wilder received permission to impress horses to mount his men. An engineer and industrialist, Wilder purchased for each of his soldiers a Spencer rifle from the manufacturer. He also acquired from the military for each soldier an army-issue two-foot handle hatchet that distinguished them from cavalry with swords, a distinction often resented by infantrymen. In addition to his four mounted infantry regiments, the colonel had Capt. Eli Lilly’s 18th Indiana Battery. Lilly’s artillery included mountain howitzers “capable of throwing shell one thousand yards” and being “taken to pieces and transported on the backs of mules.” On two occasions in February, with a squad of Stokes’s scouts, Wilder marched into the Liberty vicinity and confiscated hundreds of horses and mules.7 From February 12 to 15, Capt. Thomas Waters and 20 of Stokes’s cavalrymen escorted Col. James Monroe and 240 men of the 123rd Illinois Infantry on a scout between the Lebanon and Sparta pikes. Only limited action occurred the first three days. On the fifteenth Monroe learned from blacks and unionists that an estimated 3,000 men of Morgan’s Rebel cavalry were at Cainsville. When within two and a half miles of the town, he positioned his troops on Pierce’s Hill and sent a few of Waters’s men into the valley as “decoys.” In minutes Col. Adam R. Johnson’s partisan rangers, estimated at more than 300 men, galloped within sixty yards of Monroe’s line. With several vol6. George Crook, General George Crook: His Autobiography, ed. Mark F. Schmitt (Norman, Okla., 1960), 101–2; RAGT, 442; claims filed with DeKalb County clerk’s office against the United States for horses impressed without the issuing of a receipt, Stokes Papers, TSLA; RAGT, 442; BDTGA, 2:144; OR, 23(1):262; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 209; Robinson to Quartermaster General’s Office, May 30, 1867, Wingate T. Robinson Papers, TSLA; Cooper, Survivor of Two Wars, 10; ORN, 34(1):47. 7. Hale, DeKalb County, 211; Samuel C. Williams, General John T. Wilder: Commander of the Lightning Brigade (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 11; Glen W. Sanderland, Lightning at Hoover’s Gap: The Story of Wilder’s Brigade (New York, 1969), 28–29; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 10–12; John W. Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen: Through the Civil War with Eli Lilly’s Indiana Battery (Knoxville, 1975), 54–55, 60; Catherine Merrill, The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1866), 2:200.

Out of Murfreesboro

91

leys the bluecoats drove the enemy into “a narrow, muddy lane, where for ten minutes, [they] poured a fire into their flanks,” causing the survivors to flee “panic-stricken” over the hills to Cainsville, leaving behind scattered weapons, “saddles, blankets, and loose horses,” and a few corpses. After Monroe destroyed some abandoned weapons, he moved on with six prisoners and twentytwo horses. Two days later the colonel singled out “Captain Waters and his men [as] deserv[ing] great praise for their conduct under fire,” saying that he “could not have been successful without their assistance.”8 On March 1, as part of a four-hundred-wagon foraging expedition commanded by General Stanley, Maj. John Murphy headed a detachment of the 5th Tennessee. Portions of other cavalry regiments escorting the wagon train included the 3rd and 4th Ohio and the 4th U.S. Altogether the mounted force, all under the direct command of Col. James W. Paramore of Ohio, numbered fewer than four hundred men. As usually the case on such expeditions out of Murfreesboro, cavalry accompanied infantry, in this instance Col. John F. Miller’s brigade. Stanley’s destination was the village of Bradyville, eleven miles to the southeast. Because of their familiarity with the surrounding countryside, Paramore placed Murphy’s men in the advance.9 On the Bradyville Pike about two miles short of the village, Murphy’s horsemen, “advance[ing] bravely with carbines,” drove in the grayback pickets. But riding farther they faced fire from Rebels on a hill and behind houses. Despite having “a bullet cut the hair [on] his head,” Murphy “behaved very gallantly” as he sought to rally his men. But four were wounded and others fell “back in some confusion.” After bringing up the remainder of his cavalry, Paramore placed the major’s detachment in reserve before continuing the fight into a nearby woods where Rebels “sheltered [themselves] behind rocks and trees.” Despite “stubborn resistence,” an attack by Paramore on the enemy’s flanks caught the Johnny Rebs in a crossfire and caused them to flee. In a pursuit of about three miles, the bluecoats captured about one hundred prisoners along with their “horses, arms, and equipment.”10 On March 18 Capt. Joseph H. Blackburn’s Company A, 5th Tennessee escorted Col. Albert S. Hall’s 1,200-man midwestern infantry brigade and its Indiana battery on a reconnaissance toward Liberty. Hall’s orders were to strike the enemy should the opportunity arise. The blue-eyed twenty-one-year-old 8. OR, 23(1):48–49; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 10–12. 9. OR, 23(1):65–67; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 15–16. 10. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 15–16; OR, 23(1):65–67.

92

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

captain and his men knew the road to Liberty. With the wiry Blackburn in the advance, Hall occupied Cainsville the first night, skirmished much of the second day, and reversed his course the third day near Liberty. Hall hoped to fight on his own terms, get nearer Murfreesboro, and request reinforcements. On March 20 the colonel moved beyond Milton, twelve miles northeast of Murfreesboro, to “a steep hill covered with cedar” to await Morgan. He posted two companies of the 123rd Illinois Infantry and half of Blackburn’s men as skirmishers at the edge of the town. Once the Rebel cavalry dismounted and attacked his skirmishers, Hall dispatched three of Blackburn’s horsemen to Murfreesboro for reinforcements. Now he slowly withdrew his entire “devoted circle,” as he called them, to the crest of Vaughn’s Hill. One grayback described the hill as “heavily covered with woodland” and Hall’s flanks as “barricaded by nature with rugged boulders and undulations ending in sudden gorges.”11 When the Rebels charged this almost hidden enemy, they faced volley after volley and “shot, shell, grape, and canister.” The first and second assaults on Hall’s flanks and a third on his rear failed. The colonel’s line wavered but held for three hours. Bereft of ammunition, Morgan’s men began to withdraw, cavalry at midafternoon and artillery two hours later. Reinforcements under Minty composed of two brigades each of cavalry and infantry and a battery arrived about dark, too late to help but early enough to prevent a renewed attack by Morgan.12 Morgan’s discouraged men returned to Liberty with “dead cavalrymen tied on horses and dead artillerymen strapped on the caisson and gun carriages.” The Rebels lost about three hundred men; the Federals, about fifty. Morgan’s brother-in-law, Col. Basil Duke, thought the soldiers on both sides fought without “flinching.” Hall commended Captain Blackburn for his “daring and efficient conduct, both while scouting and while fighting the enemy,” and Pvt. James H. Blackburn, possibly a relative, for his “prompt and intelligent execution of the dispatch to Murfreesboro.”13 11. OR, 23(1):155–56, 23(2):475; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 425; Joseph H. Blackburn, 5th Tennessee, CSR; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 16–17. 12. OR, 23(1):155–56, 23(2):475; Bromfield L. Ridley, “The Battle of Milton or Vaught’s Hill,” CV 7 (July 1899): 535–36; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 426–27; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 151–52; Thomas Crofts, comp., The Third Ohio Veteran Volunteer Cavalry in the War for the Preservation of the Union from 1861–1865 (Toledo, 1910), 76. 13. Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 380; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 18.

Out of Murfreesboro

93

From April 2 to 6 Galbraith and 130 men from his battalion moved as part of a more than 1,000-man reconnaissance of cavalry and infantry under Stanley. At dawn on the second day out at Liberty, they found graybacks in force covered by sharpshooters and artillery along Snows Hill Road. When one of Stanley’s brigades trotted up Dry Creek and turned the enemy’s left flank, the Rebels hurried up the mountain. They halted three-quarters of a mile up and dismounted to fire on the Federals. But a Union charge sent them scurrying farther up the hill. Each time a Union force approached at Liberty, the Rebels contested the advance miles in front of town while the townsfolk fled “in droves to the hills northwest of town.” If outmanned, the graycoats retreated east to Snows Hill, a “collection of sloping ridges” climbing toward a wide open base, then rising to a narrow peak. Through the center of the peak for its entire length ran the curving road from Smithville.14 Lt. William L. Hathaway, a native of Liberty, alerted Stanley to a path just wide enough for a single file of riders to circle the hill and reach the enemy’s rear. Taking this trail, Captain Blackburn’s troopers panicked the Rebels, who fell back on each other, “jumbled up” their regiments, and stampeded “like cattle on the prairie.” According to Basil Duke, once the Confederates got beyond Federal fire, “they rode along quietly . . . but just couldn’t be made to fight.” Many “stay[ed] away for days,” and Morgan collected stragglers for two weeks. Meanwhile Stanley buried his dead near Atwell schoolhouse on Snows Hill and marched toward Murfreesboro with fifty prisoners and three hundred horses and mules.15 Another raid about the same time included Wilder’s brigade, accompanied by Eli Lilly’s Indiana battery and a cavalry detachment with Colonel Stokes. It wound slowly east to Lebanon through Rome, “a small town on the Cumberland. . . . surrounded by seven high hills,” east to Carthage. They were “marching over classical ground” as one soldier opined. Along the way the Federals seized “large amounts of tobacco, forage, horses, mules, and slaves,” wrote Sgt. B. F. McGee of the 72nd Indiana Infantry. According to McGee, people hid their horses everywhere imaginable, “in the woods, in ravines, in caves,” even in a “lady’s back parlor . . . tied to a bed post.” Some soldiers felt guilty with all this foraging. They realized the “object was not only to supply them14. OR, 23(1):207–14; Crofts, Third Ohio, 76–77. 15. Crofts, Third Ohio, 76–77; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 382–87; Hale, DeKalb County, 211–13; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 19–20; OR, 23(1):207–14; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 153–54.

94

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

selves, but to impoverish the country.” In a few cases the goods of Rebels were “distributed” among “destitute” unionists.16 At Carthage the bluecoats turned over their surplus to General Crook. This allowed the mounting of an additional battalion, though using “gun-straps and blankets” instead of “bridles and saddles.” Wilder’s command also drew five days’ rations and added Spears’s infantry for a march south on April 7. Unmounted soldiers marched on the turnpike toward Alexandria; Wilder, Stokes—who had not yet reentered the army—and the second section of Lilly’s battery rode over Sandcastle Road east of Smith Fork. At the Temperance Hall community the mounted troops confiscated whatever they wanted at the prosperous farm of Stokes’s brother Thomas, a Confederate supporter.17 For five miles the following day, the column plodded “over the roughest limestone rocks imaginable” until it descended “a steep hill into a beautiful valley.” Here stood Bill Stokes’s home, where his wife and two daughters resided “in spite of the threats of bushwhackers to kill them and burn the house over their heads.” After camping about a mile from his house, the following morning Stokes along with five men in the advance captured several enemy pickets “breakfasting” at the colonel’s home. Moving on, Wilder and Stokes encountered graybacks from Wharton’s division of Texas Rangers across the creek below Snows Hill. After repulsing them, they rejoined the unmounted column at Liberty. They had seized four hundred horses and mules, captured eighty-eight prisoners, and been joined by 194 contraband, who were “assured that they would find employment and protection.”18 Companies C and F, 5th Tennessee (from Bedford County) under Lt. Col. Robert Galbraith and the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee, all in a brigade commanded by Col. Daniel M. Ray, rode in a 1,700-man cavalry raid led by Minty on McMinnville, county seat of Warren County, the chief pork-producing region in Middle Tennessee. The town was also the headquarters of John Hunt Morgan and where he and his wife of four months, Mattie Ready Morgan, resided. Leaving Camp Stanley south of Murfreesboro on April 20, the expedition moved southeast and camped that night at Readyville. Before dawn Minty detached Lt. Reuben C. Couch’s Company C and 100 men of Col. Eli Long’s Ohio brigade. They would assist Minty in striking the railroad midway 16. B. F. McGee, History of the 72d Indiana of the Mounted Lightning Brigade (LaFayette, Ind., 1882), 112–15; Merrill, Soldier of Indiana, 2:200–201; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 430. 17. Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 68–70. 18. Ibid.; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 214, 429.

Out of Murfreesboro

95

between Manchester and McMinnville at “the big trestle-work,” though first allowing an anticipated train from Manchester to pass on through toward McMinnville.19 When the main column reached within two miles of McMinnville, Lt. Col. Josiah B. Park, commanding the First Brigade, deployed Galbraith’s Company F and the 4th Michigan north with two mountain howitzers to cut off enemy stragglers. Before reaching there, however, Minty’s trot turned into a gallop and then into a dash “eight abreast.” Pushing Morgan’s pickets back, he entered the town as two hundred graybacks, including Morgan and his wife, fled—the cavalry toward Sparta and the infantry to the hills.20 Morgan might have owed his life to Maj. Dick McCann. McCann’s horse fell, shot in the melee caused by the advance guard. Rather than saving himself—perhaps impossible at that point—he chose to protect Morgan by impersonating the general. Springing to his feet and “standing in front of the charging column,” wrote Basil Duke, McCann shouted, “You have got the old chief at last.” His one-man stand was effective, though short and dangerous. McCann was “ridden over, severely sabred, and captured” (that is, he was captured until he got his guard drunk and escaped). The young Pennsylvania corporal who sabered the imposter remembered only that before he struck, McCann cried at him, “Come on, you Yankee son of a b——h!”21 Major McTeer of the 3rd Tennessee found a number of encouraging “tokens of loyalty” at McMinnville. As the bluecoats passed through, “a little boy [ran] to a box . . . in the corner of the street [and] mounting it, he unfurled the stars and stripes and joyously waved it to cheer us on.” Then within minutes “strong voices at the wide of the road”—voices that soon turned out to be those of freed prisoners from his own brigade—“shout[ed] for the Union and the boys in blue.” Later, while pursuing a locomotive with one or two cars leaving the depot for Manchester, the Tennesseans passed a cotton mill. About a hundred young women “crowding the doors and windows” waved at them “with their handkerchiefs,” and the troopers responded by “raising their hats.”22 The fleeing train contained bacon and had somehow caught on fire. Every 19. OR, 23(1):273–75; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 21–24; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 248; Ed Huddleston, The Civil War in Middle Tennessee (Nashville, 1965), 55; Martha Ready Morgan to John Hunt Morgan, Jan. 6, 1863, in Jones, Heroines of Dixie, 198–200. 20. Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 248; OR, 23(1):273–75; Fitch, Army of the Cumberland, 424–25. 21. Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 389–90; OR, 23(1):274; Duke, Reminiscences, 270; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 155–56. 22. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 49–51.

96

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

few yards the troopers found “fat bacon simmering and smoking.” Once they caught up with the locomotive after pursuing it for ten miles, it was badly damaged. They retraced their way at twilight back to McMinnville by the light of “burning bacon.” Reaching the cotton mill, they were “chagrin[ed] . . . to find [it] smouldering in ashes—burned to the ground by some reckless soldier.”23 Meanwhile Colonel Park and his men, rejoined by Galbraith, circled clockwise through the town and two miles toward Manchester to reinforce troops at a railroad bridge. Near the bridge Galbraith’s men and the 4th Michigan’s troopers “captured 2 wagons, about 8,000 pounds of bacon,” and sundry other items. The colonel left his most fatigued men at the bridge, which he ordered burned along with the bacon, and followed Colonel Ray’s brigade toward Manchester. Park reached the railroad west of Morrison Station. Colonel Long struck the railroad farther west, seven miles from Manchester, then working his way east, destroyed most of the railroad bridges toward Morrison Station and a locomotive and three cars out of McMinnville. “By this expedition,” wrote Capt. Joseph G. Vale of the 7th Pennsylvania, a participant, “the effort to establish the right wing of Bragg’s army at McMinnville was frustrated.”24 Early in April 1863 Rosecrans—at the suggestion of his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. James A. Garfield—sent an expedition of 1,700 mounted troops under Col. Abel D. Streight up the Tennessee River to northern Alabama. He directed Streight, having earlier served with General Buell in the region, to link up with General Dodge’s command of 8,000 infantry, then march as one expedition before veering off to the southeast behind Bragg’s rear and destroying the railroad out of Atlanta at Rome, Georgia. As many as 300 of the colonel’s otherwise predominantly midwestern horsemen were northern Alabama enlistees recruited by him in 1862. Added to them were Capt. D. D. Smith’s detachment of Companies D and E, 5th Tennessee, also from the region, composed mostly of Confederate deserters who were “liable to be shot if taken prisoners,” as General Stanley, who opposed the operation, observed.25 Because of their availability and their presumed suitability for the hilly terrain, mules were Streight’s selection as mounts for his infantrymen. Rosecrans promised the colonel enough mules for half of his men; the other mules or horses had to be seized en route to Georgia. As later events proved, the mules would be more of a hindrance than a help. One grayback officer later described 23. OR, 23(1):273–75; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 21–24. 24. OR, 23(1):273–75; Vale, Minty and the Cavalry, 155. 25. OR, 23(1):285; Eicher, Longest Night, 448; Stanley, Memoirs, 131–32.

Out of Murfreesboro

97

Streight’s army as a “Jackass Cavalry” composed of “noisy . . . , stubborn,” and usually “intractable” mules that “kept the whole countryside informed of their presence morning, noon, and night.”26 Streight arrived at Fort Henry on April 15 with 1,700 soldiers and 1,250 mules and horses. Four days later he reached Eastport, Mississippi, near Dodge’s army in northwest Alabama. He followed slowly in the rear of Dodge’s infantry to Tuscumbia, hoping to conceal the expedition’s purpose. Near Sand Mountain on April 28, the colonel had all his soldiers mounted for the first time. Meanwhile Dodge, deceived by Forrest, sent south by Bragg to intercept the raiders, notified Streight that his men faced only “small squads” of Confederates. This was good news for the colonel as it was his “intent to avoid . . . a general engagement” for the sake of his mission. Circumstances now appeared favorable: a fully mounted force, an encouraging message from Dodge, and a clear sky. Streight was also in an area containing “devoted Union people” related to many of his raiders, who received “happy greetings [from] their friends and relations.”27 But on April 30 while moving through Day’s Gap of Sand Mountain— described by Streight as an “open” and “thickly wooded” elevation with “sand ridges . . . afford[ing] fine defensive positions”—Col. Philip D. Roddey’s Rebel command of north Alabamians attacked the rearguard of Capt. D. D. Smith’s men. The Indiana colonel soon learned that elements of Forrest’s command also sought to flank him through other gaps crossing Day’s Gap that Streight had learned about from Smith’s men. The captain delayed Roddey’s troopers and more of Forrest’s force long enough for the raiders’ main column to ride ahead and deploy for an ambush. The colonel selected for his line of battle a ridge facing a ravine on his right, a marshy run on his left, and with a ravine to his rear for keeping the mules and horses.28 Finally when pressed by the enemy, Smith, as ordered, retreated as expeditiously as possible. As expected the enemy pursued. Led by the general’s brother, Capt. Bill Forrest, and his proud “Forty Scouts” and followed by others, the Rebels rode toward the trap. After Smith and his men passed safely 26. OR, 23(1):285; John Watson Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry (Nashville, 1909), 91. 27. OR, 23(1):285–88; Robert S. Henry, ed., As They Saw Forrest: Some Recollections and Comments of Contemporaries (Jackson, Tenn., 1956), 226; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 139–46. 28. OR, 23(1):288–89; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 226–27; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 146–48; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 175–79.

98

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

through, the bluecoats arose from their hiding places in tall grass and, along with their two mountain howitzers hidden by brush, fired their first of many volleys. Among those falling from their saddles was Captain Forrest, hit by a Minié ball that shattered one of his thigh bones. As additional Rebels kept arriving at the scene, the ambush soon developed into a five-hour shootout. Finally a counterattack drove the graycoats from the field. The Rebels left behind, reported Streight, “two pieces of artillery . . . , about 40 prisoners . . . , a large number of wounded, and about 30 dead.”29 Six miles down the road around four o’clock, Forrest struck Streight’s flanks at Hog Mountain. The colonel, however, kept his column in motion as Captain Smith’s “little handful of men,” according to Streight’s aide de camp, Lt. A. C. Roach, “kept the enemy at bay for more than two hours.” Finally Streight formed a line of battle, and the fighting continued until ten o’clock and in “the light of the full moon,” which Roach recalled “looked calmly down on the bloody scene.” Then the raiders moved on, Col. Gilbert Hathaway’s 73rd Indiana taking up the rearguard but remaining stationary on the ground. Streight, who remained behind with Hathaway, wrote that this time, as the enemy approached within forty yards, “the whole regiment opened a most destructive fire, causing a complete stampede of the enemy.” But Forrest regrouped and pressed the bluecoats again at two o’clock on the morning of May 1, causing the colonel to deploy yet another ambush. But the coy Rebel general simply halted to concentrate and feed his men and horses. Streight plunged doggedly ahead to Blountsville, arriving at ten in the morning after having ridden forty-three miles and fought several skirmishes during the previous thirty hours.30 In retrospect the tactics of the opposing commanders appeared in broad outline after the first day of fighting. While guarding his own rear and dogging Streight’s route of escape, Forrest would rotate his weary soldiers from action to rest as he pressed the enemy’s rear and flanks. The Union commander intended to push forward with his main column toward the railroad in North Georgia, to ambush the pressing enemy and thereby slow his pursuit, to continue to find fresh mounts for himself and deny them to Forrest, and to use and then destroy the bridges.31 29. OR, 23(1):289; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 226–27. 30. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 227–29; OR, 23(1):289–90; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 148–49; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 181–83. 31. Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 149–51; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 183, 185–90; OR, 23(1):290; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 229.

Out of Murfreesboro

99

At Blountsville the Federals halted for two hours to rest and feed their animals, distribute rations and ammunition, and burn any remaining wagons that would impede their progress. When the main column had barely ridden toward Gadsden, Forrest struck the rearguard still at Blountsville. For several miles in flight, Captain Smith’s men “stopp[ed] in the thick bushes by the side of the road and fir[ed] at [the enemy] at short range.” At Black Warrior River— “a crooked, deep, and sluggish stream with precipitous clay banks”—after the main column crossed, Forrest “fiercely attacked” Smith’s command before the general crossed the next morning and burned the bridge. To the Federals the Black Warrior “seemed to be unfordable.” Unfortunately for them, young Emma Sansom, who resided near the stream, escorted Forrest to a secluded ford where cattle often crossed and where his men now could safely ride across.32 On May 2 at Gadsden, sixty miles from his Rome destination, Streight halted just long enough to destroy arms and commissary supplies. By now the colonel had learned to his own “embarrassment,” he wrote, that “a portion of [his] ammunition had [recently] become damaged in crossing Wills Creek, which, at that time, was very deep fording.” Skirmishing later at Blount’s plantation after the enemy drove in Smith’s rearguard, Streight learned that almost all of his remaining ammunition was wet and worthless. During the fighting Colonel Hathaway, whose men “almost worshipped him,” fell victim to a sharpshooter’s bullet. Now Streight realized that his sole hope of escape was to cross the Coosa River at Rome and then destroy the bridge. He sent Capt. Milton Russell of the 51st Indiana and “200 of the best-mounted men” ahead as a vanguard to hold the bridge, the railroad, and the telegraph before the town could resist. Streight and his staff believed that if “a[n enemy] force collected at Rome sufficient to prevent [the] crossing [of] the bridge, there would be no alternative left . . . but to surrender.”33 En route to Gaylesville Streight’s column rode over “an old coal chopping for several miles, where the timber had been . . . hauled off . . . , leaving innumerable wagon roads running in every direction.” This caused his confused men to travel for a while in different directions. The timber cut here was burned for charcoal to furnish nearby Round Mountain Iron Furnace, destroyed shortly before by one of Streight’s scouting parties. The cast pig iron was used for the manufacturing of ordnance at a Rome foundry. By the time 32. OR, 23(1):290–92; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 232–34; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 151–53. 33. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 234–36; OR, 23(1):292.

100

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

the expedition reached Cedar Bluff shortly before sunrise, some men could not remain awake long enough to eat while others slept in line of battle.34 The tragic expedition ended when Forrest demanded surrender. Streight agreed to capitulate after learning that Russell’s two hundred men had failed to cross the bridge at Rome, where a Rebel force already had collected and removed the bridge’s flooring and prepared it with “straw and turpentine ready to ignite.” Under a flag of truce, Forrest also convinced the colonel that he had an unfordable river on his right; “a mountain on his left, which shut him off from escape”; a superior force to his front; and additional troops burgeoning to his rear. In a succinct speech at the surrender scene to his men—brooking no objections from Forrest—Streight commended them “for . . . gallantry and endurance,” explained why he had surrendered, and asked them to give three cheers for the Union.35 Forrest sent the prisoners under escort to Rome and captured Russell’s two hundred men nearby. From there he shipped the Union officers to Libby Prison at Richmond and had the enlisted men exchanged. A few days later Alabama governor John G. Shorter demanded that the two Union companies of Alabamians be tried for “their treasonable acts” against the state and the Confederacy. After conferring with General Bragg, Secretary of War James A. Seddon reported inaccurately (probably knowingly) to Shorter that “if there were any Alabamians enlisted among [the raiding Federals] they made their escape before capture.” The men of Companies D and E returned to the 5th Tennessee after being exchanged in early June, just in time to see action at Shelbyville on June 27. After being officially transferred by Secretary of War Stanton to the 1st Alabama Cavalry on June 25, the two companies of Alabama unionists remained at Shelbyville until joining their new regiment in August.36 Among those reporting to the 1st Alabama from Company D was twentyseven-year-old Lt. David R. Snelling, a deserter from the 57th Georgia Infantry. The Milledgeville soldier developed a distaste for slavery while managing a plantation for a wealthy uncle named David Lester. After serving less than three months in his Confederate regiment, Snelling fled across the lines in July 1862 and joined the Union army. Later he commanded Sherman’s escort during the general’s infamous march through Georgia. When Sherman’s army entered Milledgeville, Georgia’s capital, Snelling briefly visited with some of his 34. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 36; OR, 23(1):292. 35. Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 274–75; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 155. 36. Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 492n; OR, 23(1):292; ORS, 1:21, 23, 24.

Out of Murfreesboro

101

uncle’s slaves and with David Lester, from whom he confiscated some horses and stole other property before burning his ginhouse.37 On May 5 General Stanley moved Stokes’s headquarters northeast from Murfreesboro to Carthage. There Major Murphy’s battalion had already scouted the countryside; served as mail couriers and escorts to Gallatin, twenty-five miles to the west; stood guard duty; and performed “various camp duties.” On April 18 twenty of Murphy’s men, driving fifty head of cattle from Gallatin to Carthage, were captured by a combined force of Rebel infantry and cavalry near Hartsville. During May and June alone, mail couriers became prisoners three times, reportedly “overpowered by the superior force of the enemy.” Murphy’s battalion also gathered intelligence. Confederate colonel Thomas Harrison, commanding at Smithville, reported on May 13 “that three spies from Stokes’s command, Captain Blackburn among them, had been lurking in [his] vicinity for two days.” He thought that “they had probably ascertained the strength and position of all [his] outposts.”38 During early 1863 Stokes, like Edwards, encountered dissension from young officers, but he survived the fray and continued with the regiment into 1864. So too did most of his brave and daring officers, such as Captains Waters and Blackburn, who knew the hills and roads east of Murfreesboro. Stokes’s Tennesseans proved invaluable as scouts, guides, and spies for other Union regiments as they foraged, fought, and impressed horses in the foothills of the Cumberlands. Backed by adequate numbers, they forced John Hunt Morgan to fight on the defensive—never his forte. But raiding into Alabama and fighting Forrest proved hazardous for mounted Union troopers unsupported by infantry, and the Alabamians of Companies D and E, 5th Tennessee paid the price for Streight’s misadventure. Unlike that mission, though, most of the fighting around Murfreesboro had what one writer called its “catch-as-catchcan aspect, as opposing forces . . . unexpectedly stumbled into one another.”39 The first half of 1863 was part of a transition period in Middle Tennessee. As elsewhere, Union war policy was moving from an emphasis on reconciliation to one of a “hard war.” Hard-war policy fell short of “total war,” which in37. James C. Bonner, Milledgeville, Georgia: Antebellum Capital (Athens, Ga., 1978), 184; William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (New York, 1886), 2:186–87; James C. Bonner, “David R. Snelling,” Georgia Review 10 (fall 1956): 275–82. 38. ORS, 65:497, 508, 514; TICW, 1:330. 39. Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible, 319.

102

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

cluded civilian executions and widespread destruction of homes. Historian Mark Grimsley has referred to the time between midsummer 1862 and the beginning of 1864 as “a pragmatic interlude” during which Union commanders “foraged” when necessary and “retaliated when beset by guerrillas, but otherwise viewed civilians as peripheral to their concerns.” Even then officers distinguished between pro-Confederates, neutrals, and unionists and generally treated each differently. But Yankee attitudes of revenge and greed and feelings of deprivation shaped behavior as much as did military orders. Tennessee Tories on occasion engaged in unauthorized foraging (stealing) and the destruction of private property out of retaliation or in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Rebels.40 Foraging was a widespread practice east and west of Murfreesboro, as it had been for armies for hundreds of years. Heretofore it had developed slowly during the Civil War because commanders such as Buell believed it would embitter the South and prolong the war. But after Stones River and the frequent cutting of the railroad out of Nashville by Confederates, Rosecrans felt compelled to rely upon foraging to feed his army, and soon gaining legal authority to do so from Washington. Foraging details from his army could be very large as was the one of General Stanley’s on March 1 consisting of four hundred wagons that included in its escort a detachment from the 5th Tennessee. Such expeditions usually lasted a full day or into the following day as officers divided their wagons and men into teams responsible for certain neighborhoods of farms and further divided these teams into squads for meats, for vegetables, or for fodder. Other squads impressed horses and some drove livestock. As this occurred and wagons waited along the roadside to rejoin the train, often some cavalrymen, forced frequently to live off the countryside, wandered off to steal valuables from nearby noncombatants.41 40. Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 3–4. 41. Volo and Volo, Civil War America, 122–24; OR, 23(1):65–67, ser. 3, 3(1):150; John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Chicago, 1960), 231–42.

CHAPTER 6

The Chattanooga Campaign

G

eneral Stanley reorganized his Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Cumberland in June 1863 into two divisions: Brig. Gen. Robert B. Mitchell’s First Division and Brig. Gen. George Crook’s Second Division. The first three Tennessee regiments served in Mitchell’s division, and Stokes’s 5th served in Minty’s “saber brigade” of Crook’s division. The 4th Tennessee remained unattached at Nashville.1 Brownlow’s boys found Mitchell, a Mexican War veteran, Kansas attorney, and onetime Free-Soiler, to be “a rigid disciplinarian,” recalled Sgt. William R. Carter. The general filled their days with “reviews, inspections and drills” and their nights sharing space in “dog-tents” sized to protect only half of a man from the elements. Before dawn he had his cavalrymen fully equipped with their horses saddled, in formation, and ready to march. Mitchell required discipline in all matters, whether in “roll-call, guard-mounting, drill [or] cooking beans and bacon.” If a man burned a light after taps, the general made him “carry a rail three to five hours.” On the march he dismounted stragglers, compelling them to “march the remainder of the day in the rear.”2 As Rosecrans had planned, on June 23 a diversion on the far right set the stage for the main movement of his army on the left the following day. Mitchell’s cavalry and Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger’s infantry corps moved southwest toward Shelbyville. Following Stanley’s order, the horsemen brought only the “clothing on [their] backs” and the thought of having to “subsist . . . on the country.” When Col. Archibald P. Campbell’s brigade of the First Division met the enemy at Rover, Brownlow and the 1st Tennessee forged ahead. But the 1. TICW, 1:319, 322, 325, 327, 330; Carter, First Regiment, 72. 2. Carter, First Regiment, 80; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 557–58.

104

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

young officer lost two men and “[s]hot his horse trying to Shoot a rebel that had come through [the Union] lines.” When another Johnny Reb rode wildly across the skirmish line, Brownlow’s men fired a barrage before his horse fell with the bewildered but unscathed rider. The horse’s reins had been cut by bullets, making the frightened trooper “an unwilling participant” in what appeared to be reckless bravery.3 The next day each trooper pushed south in his “poncho, part hanging in front and part behind [with] the brim of his hat turned so as to shed the pouring rain.” Days of rain had turned the road into a quagmire, and the unrelenting weather continued as they drove the graycoats back at Middleton. That night, as on other occasions, Brownlow’s men slept on a solid surface of two wooden rails “side by side” in the mud.4 Following Stanley’s order “to dislodge the enemy at Gay’s Gap,” Minty’s brigade of twenty-five hundred horsemen, including Galbraith’s battalion of the 5th Tennessee, moved south on June 27 from Triune to Shelbyville under “light marching orders,” carrying only necessities. The town sat on the north bank of the Duck River, known for its width as well as its “deep bed and rock sides.” Riding ahead as Minty’s advance, Galbraith’s men removed a barricade across the road at the crest of a hill, then charged fleeing graybacks toward Shelbyville, scattering them in every direction. But Galbraith halted after learning that Wheeler’s main force stood behind fieldworks north of Shelbyville.5 Minty pushed his remaining cavalry around Galbraith to flank the enemy, taking three hundred prisoners before reaching Shelbyville, defended by a few hundred of Wheeler’s horsemen still expecting reinforcements from Forrest. When the Federals reached within a quarter mile of the town, the enemy opened fire with four pieces of artillery posted on high ground. At Minty’s orders, the 7th Pennsylvania, “a regiment of . . . blacksmiths,” charged in four columns on the main stone-paved road leading to the public square, followed closely by the 4th U.S. Cavalry and Galbraith’s battalion, several of whose Tennesseans fell to enemy fire. In one final three-hour stand around the square, 3. Carter, First Regiment, 74–75; James Larson, Sergeant Larson: 4th Cavalry, ed. A. L. Blum (San Antonio, 1935), 163–65; Stanley, Memoirs, 144–45; OR, 23(1):539–40; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:235–38; Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen, 134–35. 4. Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen, 136; Carter, First Regiment, 75. 5. Vale, Minty and the Cavalry, 175; Stanley, Memoirs, 147; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:245; Larson, Sergeant Larson, 167.

The Chattanooga Campaign

105

the intensity of shots sounded like “a canebrake on fire,” followed by a “medley” of noises, “defiant yells,” bellowing horses, and anguished cries, as one Rebel recalled. Some local unionists recognized Galbraith’s hometown boys. Despite all “the wild pandemonia,” one Yankee officer recalled, “dozens of ladies rushed from their houses, and . . . waved the stars and stripes, cheering and yelling . . . , ‘God bless our boys in blue!’ ”6 During a momentary midafternoon lull, Wheeler retreated, leaving behind the 4th Alabama of about two hundred men “to stand until they were ridden down.” As the last wagon crossed the bridge, Forrest approached the town, encouraging Wheeler to recross with five hundred men. But by now an overpowering number of Union cavalry came “charging . . . , riding through and over them.” This resulted in three hundred Rebels surrendering and Skull Camp Bridge becoming blocked by an overturned wagon. To escape, General Wheeler and others plunged with their horses into the turbulent waters of swollen Duck River and successfully swam them across; sixty or so Confederates tried but drowned. Meanwhile Forrest moved below the town and rode on south.7 When Minty moved south too, he left Galbraith’s battalion at Shelbyville to protect the town’s unionists from an estimated five hundred guerrillas operating between there and Lawrenceburg. Unfortunately, along with fighting guerrillas, the Tennesseans foraged freely and took revenge on old enemies. Brig. Gen. Walter C. Whitaker of Kentucky, commanding at Shelbyville, reported that “as far as he could tell, they [were] under no control or discipline.” While on patrol Galbraith’s men “plunder[ed] through the country.” And the general had heard of “several instances . . . of their insulting unprotected females.”8 By June 30 Rosecrans’s army, along with Stanley’s cavalry, reached Manchester, Bragg’s army falling back to Tullahoma by then and by July 4 on to Chattanooga. Having distributed his army over a wide expanse on many roads, Rosecrans had advanced about nine miles a day. For the next month his pace 6. Larson, Sergeant Larson, 165; Vale, Minty and the Cavalry, 176–78, 185–86; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 101–3. 7. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:244–46; Carter, First Regiment, 76–77; Stanley, Memoirs, 148–49; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 208; DuBose, Wheeler, 175–77; Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen, 137–38; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 164–66. 8. TICW, 1:330–31.

106

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

would slow to four miles a day as he awaited railroad repairs in order to supply his command. After some days of celebration over Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Stanley raided Huntsville, Alabama, to “collect . . . all the horses, mules and forage [he] could find” and, under orders from Rosecrans, “impress every able bodied colored man he could find to use as teamsters and for work upon the fortifications of Nashville and Murfreesboro.” Galbraith now commanded one of the brigades on this raid. Stanley accomplished one objective by seizing black males as “the negro churches . . . emptied after service on Sunday.” Within a few days his raiders returned to Winchester, Tennessee, Rosecrans’s headquarters, with forage aplenty along with horses, mules, and “six hundred able bodied negroes.”9 Stanley started his corps south toward Fayetteville on July 14, still covering the right flank of Rosecrans’s army, with all except for Minty’s brigade riding with Wilder’s mounted infantry, which deployed on Rosecrans’s left at McMinnville. The army remained along this line from Fayetteville to Decherd to McMinnville until mid-August. Meanwhile the general justified his wait by informing Washington that he should not move until corn ripened for his horses; railroads were repaired to bring supplies south to Stevenson, Alabama ( occupied in a raid by Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan); and he received support on his flanks from Grant in Mississippi and Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside from East Tennessee. Predictably, the War Department and President Lincoln were displeased with Rosecrans’s conditions.10 After Mitchell’s division scouted during the last days of July, Stanley ordered it to hunt down guerrillas and bushwhackers around Fayetteville. Despite the loss of a few pickets, Brownlow’s Tennesseans spent a few daylight hours “bathing and fishing” and the nights sleeping on “a soft coat of grass.” Colonel Brownlow also forged personal alliances with local unionists for selfdefense. Mitchell hoped his offering of loyalty oaths would eradicate support for the guerrillas. Col. Edward M. McCook, one of the “fighting McCooks” of Ohio, commanded one of Mitchell’s brigades. The colonel resorted to the more effective strategies of hanging bushwhackers and burning their supporters’ property. Near Decherd, where a year before Capt. Frank Gurley of the 4th Alabama had mortally wounded Colonel McCook’s cousin, Brig. Gen. Robert L. McCook, as the general lay sick in a wagon, Stanley showed his sup9. Vincent J. Esposito, ed. The West Point Atlas of the Civil War (New York, 1962), 109; Stanley, Memoirs, 151–52; B&L, 4:415. 10. Esposito, West Point Atlas, 109.

The Chattanooga Campaign

107

port of Colonel McCook by ordering his bluecoats to destroy “all houses, outbuildings, barns and fences.”11 By now new local recruits appeared, mostly deserters from Bragg’s beaten army. Rosecrans shipped many to Nashville as potential one-year or threeyear volunteers. He allowed those willing to take an amnesty oath to enlist, claiming that they had hardly any choice but to do so since they could not “follow the avocation of peace nor have proper protection at home.” In late August at Larkinsville, west of Scottsboro and the Tennessee River, Colonel McCook learned that Capt. Ephraim Latham and seventy-six of his local company awaited muster into the Union army and that other Tories had enrolled independent companies in the Sand Mountains in anticipation of the army crossing the river. McCook enlisted Latham’s company, mostly composed of men under twenty-five years of age but with a substantial number over forty years old, and sent them to Stevenson for arms. Then he posted the new Federals along the railroad to Huntsville. On September 26 guerrillas attacked them as they guarded an army sawmill. When they “disgracefully ran away,” according to reports, the guerrillas captured eighteen before the others returned to Larkinsville. Later some of those prone to illness received leaves from Latham to reside at home for weeks at a time.12 Other independent companies were also part of the so-called 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry (USA), raised from summer 1863 to spring 1864 without ever operating as a regiment. Comprising one-year enlistees, the companies guarded the railroad, scouted to the south and east, escorted prisoners, and served as guides for troops into North Georgia. Reportedly in February 1864 one new captain named Lewis Morgan “mustered his company with pencil, on brown paper, christened it, assumed command, ordered an advance into Sand Mountain” and soon thereafter captured some “rebel home guards.” Altogether five Alabama companies (A, B, C, G, and H) organized at Stevenson and Bridgeport, mostly composed of young illiterate farmers unable to write their names. At least one company reached a full capacity of vol11. Carter, First Regiment, 79, 81–82; Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen, 139; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 528–29; Crook, Autobiography, 113; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 76; Hagerman, American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare, 212–13; Cunningham, “Captain Frank B. Gurley,” 83– 99; Jones H. Rodabaugh, “The Fighting McCooks,” Civil War History 3 ( Sept. 1957): 287–90; Merrill, Soldier of Indiana, 1:268; David A. Briggs and James P. Brownlow to Johnson, Aug. 9, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Brownlow to wife, July 13, 1863, William G. Brownlow Papers, UTL; OR, 30(3):529. 12. OR, 30(3):529; TICW, 1:317; Storey, Loyalty and Loss, 103–4.

108

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

unteers: Pvt. Warren Lot of Company C recalled much later that his unit had 108 men.13 Three Tennessee companies (D, E, and F) joined the 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette. Some recruits were Rebel deserters from Bragg’s retreat. One officer, 2nd Lt. John W. Claiborne of Shelbyville, formerly served as an enlisted man in Stokes’s 5th, while another, 1st Lt. Charles B. Ainsworth, had scouted for the Union army since 1862. The army imprisoned Ainsworth at Nashville in spring 1864 for “playing Guerrilla” but released him without charges in September and allowed him to join the 10th Tennessee. Twenty-six-year-old Capt. Calvin Brixley, a Confederate deserter from Coffee County and selfproclaimed “Artist,” reputedly preyed on both sides before declaring his loyalty to the Union in summer 1863. According to him, he was “a bushwhacker– conscript hunter before the army advanced” and had “fought the Guerillers all over Middle Tennessee.” His Company D roamed freely, fighting guerrillas and bushwhackers and punishing their supporters in Grundy and surrounding counties. Governor Johnson received numerous complaints concerning Brixley’s plundering and murdering of prisoners who were reportedly “endeavoring to escape.” Finally Johnson ordered the captain to Nashville in June 1864 “for trial for his long continued offences.” Following Brixley’s appeal to General Thomas and others for a military rather than a civilian trial, which he believed would find to hang him within two days, he was released. Soon he recruited a new company that he offered to General Rosecrans, by then in Missouri, writing that the men were “too rough for this country & . . . anxious to get to the western frontiers.”14 Company E, commanded by Capt. Stephen T. Tipton, consisted of ninetyone men enrolled at Altamont in December 1863. This unit of largely unarmed and unequipped men served as part of Tracy City’s garrison when attacked by Maj. Willis S. Bledsoe’s command on January 20, 1864. Bledsoe, down from Sparta, had Tipton shot at his home at Altamont before attacking the garrison, burning the depot and the engine house and destroying the works at the coalmine. First Lt. P. M. Radford’s Company F, raised from Bedford County 13. TICW, 1:317; TCWVQ, 1:128–29, 154–55; 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry, CSR; John R. Phillips, “An Alabama Bluecoat,” Civil War Times Illustrated 9 (Nov. 1970): 15–20. 14. TICW, 1:317; PAJ, 6:391n; Brixley to Johnson, Sept. 27, 1864, Johnson Papers, LC; C. B. Ainsworth to Johnson, July 5, Sept. 6, 1864, ibid.; Charles B. Ainsworth and Calvin Brixley, 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vidette Cavalry, CSR; Brownlow to wife, July 13, 1863, Brownlow Papers, UTL.

The Chattanooga Campaign

109

refugees at Nashville initially as Company M, 5th Tennessee, was stationed at Camp Thomas near the capital during early spring 1864 and attached for a few weeks to the 4th Tennessee. In May the seventy-nine men of Company F were ordered to Pulaski, headquarters of the newly created Fourth Cavalry Division, commanded by General Gillem. The entire 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry was mustered out of the army on June 16, 1864.15 It is uncertain how many men below Murfreesboro joined other Union army units from 1863 to 1865. But life could be uncertain for those who did. One Yankee told of an unnamed unionist of the 2nd Tennessee residing fourteen miles west of Pulaski. While under threat of Confederate conscription in early 1863, the man joined the 33rd Tennessee Infantry (CSA). After deserting while on furlough “to go home and settle his affairs,” he was imprisoned briefly during spring 1863 before escaping through Union lines to join the 2nd Tennessee at Murfreesboro. But when he returned with a squad of troopers from Giles County to vote in the local election in March 1864, neighbors “dogged” him and five guerrillas burned his house to force him out. Near Clifton they turned him over to Rebel regulars, who robbed him of an “Overcoat, Boots and Hat . . . and Seven dollar in Greenback.” Soon thereafter, while the Rebels felt threatened by nearby Union cavalry, he escaped and “subsisted on what the negroes on plantations gave him” as he galloped thirty-seven miles to the Union lines to rejoin his unit at Decatur, Alabama.16 Rosecrans’s orders to Stanley from mid-August to early September, other than to institute a courier service, concerned operations along the Tennessee River: picket a crossing, moor buoys at a ford, and expel bushwhackers from its southern bank. Stanley finally received significant instructions on September 3 to guard the advance of the Army of the Cumberland’s right wing toward Rome, Georgia, by riding southeast across Sand Mountain and Lookout Mountain, halting at Alpine, Georgia. From Alpine he was to “make a strong diversion” toward Rome, locate the enemy’s position, and “ascertain [his] intentions.”17 15. Charges and Specifications Preferred against Sgt. William S. Smith of Company F, 1st Regiment Independent Vidette Cavalry, Luther Meade Blackman Papers, TSLA; ORS, 65:465; TICW, 1:317; 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry, CSR; William F. Amann, Personnel of the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1961), 2:233. 16. George H. Cadman to wife, Mar. 16, 1864, George Hovey Cadman Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 17. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:263–64.

110

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

Stanley’s corps immediately ascended the “zig-zag road” on steep and rocky Sand Mountain. Dismounted details assisted the swearing teamsters and their “patient government mules” in moving the wagons. At the summit the corps halted to view the “serpentine course” of the Tennessee River and “range after range of small mountains.” Forty-two miles south of Chattanooga, the cavalry rested three days while their wagons caught up. Furious with Stanley for the delay, Rosecrans complained that “the cavalry . . . was not pushed . . . to the extent . . . which the necessities of the campaign required.”18 On September 9 Stanley crossed Lookout Mountain into Georgia at Alpine and learned that Bragg had abandoned Chattanooga. At this time Mitchell replaced Stanley, who had been down with dysentery for several days and was not getting any better, as commander of the Cavalry Corps. The next day Mitchell ordered Colonel McCook, now commanding the First Division, on a scout toward Rome. Colonel Brownlow and Maj. Calvin Dyer of the 1st Tennessee rode in the advance, each leading a battalion on a separate road to the town. Brownlow pursued the enemy at twilight in a running fight on Dirt Road until he heard Rebel buglers blowing “Boots and Saddles.” Both battalions returned with a few prisoners.19 After Rosecrans ordered Mitchell to reconnoiter in force toward La Fayette, Georgia, on September 13, Mitchell sent Crook directly and McCook by way of Summerville. McCook struck the enemy’s cavalry picket line ten miles before reaching La Fayette. The 9th Pennsylvania charged, followed by the 1st Tennessee and 2nd Michigan. After encountering heavy fire, McCook ordered a retreat. On that hot, dry day in an area bereft of rain for two weeks, “great clouds of dust . . . conceal[ed] them” from nearby Rebel batteries as the Federals trotted back to Alpine with prisoners and vital information.20 By the morning of September 19, Rosecrans had formed a line of battle across the southeast side of Chickamauga Creek. During the day the cavalry formed south of the infantry at Crawfish Springs, location of the army’s field hospital. Rosecrans ordered Mitchell to “hold [his position] at all hazards.” Crawfish Springs included a large mansion (the Gordon-Lee House), grounds of “stately oaks,” and several “outbuildings.” Nearby lay a “magnificent spring” described by one 2nd Tennessee soldier as “deep enough to swim a horse.” The army supplemented these facilities with “large circus tents . . . scattered about 18. Carter, First Regiment, 85–86; OR, 30(1):52, 30(3):637, 653; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:266–67. 19. Carter, First Regiment, 86–88; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 526–28. 20. Carter, First Regiment, 88–89; Crook, Autobiography, 104–5; OR, 30(1):918.

The Chattanooga Campaign

111

over acres of ground.” Overcrowding soon forced hospital stewards and others to lay hundreds of wounded “on the leaves and sedge grass of an old field.”21 On the first day’s battle at Chickamauga, Union cavalry engaged the enemy only lightly since the fighting focused to its north. On the second day Mitchell’s men fought infantry as well as cavalry. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Scenes of friend and foe, “with their pale, shy countenances turned toward the sky . . . dissipate[d] the excitement” of victory, recalled one Rebel. When Bragg turned the Federal right, Rosecrans ordered all wagons toward Chattanooga. Blue cavalry rode north in the late afternoon on September 20. Ambulances lacked sufficient space for all of the wounded. Some of Brownlow’s men placed wounded comrades on horses, but Mitchell, knowing an engagement would place both the wounded and the cavalrymen at a disadvantage, ordered the wounded returned to the hospital. When the 2nd Tennessee’s men moved out, they left behind grassfires caused by enemy shells, one thousand wounded men, a large number of “able-bodied nurses . . . , and a small supply of hospital stores.”22 Moving dismounted toward Chattanooga in the dark, Mitchell ordered his troopers to cause as little noise as possible. Each man led his horse with one hand and carried his saber in the other. They did not “speak above a whisper” and even wrapped the wheels of moving artillery to muffle the sound. After reaching Chattanooga and finding “a large rabble without organization,” they learned that the cavalry had lost 468 men out of the 10,000 engaged, a significant but small number compared with Rosecrans’s total loss of 16,000 men.23 In Chattanooga they were, as Crook later wrote, with their “back . . . against the Tennessee River, too deep to ford.” They had “but one pontoon bridge . . . , of little or no value in case of a retreat.” Rosecrans entrenched his army and fortified it “in a long line of works stretch[ing] . . . crescent like” below the town. During the subsequent two-month siege, his soldiers cleared much of Chattanooga to construct “winter quarters . . . , composed of small dog-kennel-shaped huts, built of boards and roofed over with . . . sheltertents.” Bragg held Missionary Ridge overlooking the city and Lookout Moun21. Carter, First Regiment, 92–93, 95–97; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 64–65; Peter Cozzens, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga (Urbana, 1992), 463–64, 466. 22. George B. Guild, A Brief Narrative of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment: Wheeler’s Corps, Army of Tennessee (Nashville, 1913), 28; Carter, First Regiment, 92–94. 23. Carter, First Regiment, 92–94; Dornbluser, Pennsylvania Dragoons, 131; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 29.

112

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

tain overlooking the Tennessee River. He had cut the railroad from Bridgeport, Alabama, forcing the Federals, now precariously close to starvation as they received quarter rations, to haul in supplies by wagon from the rail line at Bridgeport. The wagons moved north up the Sequatchie Valley and east over Walden’s Ridge to Chattanooga, often taking as many as twenty days to travel sixty miles. To prevent one or more enemy crossings of the river and to protect the wagon trains, Rosecrans ordered Mitchell to spread his cavalry along the river east and west of the town.24 Late in September, after consulting with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, who had come west with reinforcements from Virginia, Bragg decided to starve out Rosecrans. He ordered Wheeler, whose command, according to Col. Isaac W. Avery, “was neither well organized, nor well equipped, well armed nor well mounted,” to cross the Tennessee River forty miles above Chattanooga at Cottonport, ride west into the Sequatchie Valley, and destroy the enemy’s wagon trains. The cavalry then would move northwest toward Nashville, destroying railroad tracks and supply depots along the way. Altogether the expedition, consisting of divisions commanded by Brig. Gens. John Wharton, William T. Martin, and Henry B. Davidson, numbered four thousand cavalrymen. Wheeler’s command totaled about the same number as Crook’s horsemen spread over more than fifty miles east of Chattanooga.25 Under cover of darkness and rain near Cottonport, Wheeler crossed the Tennessee River and pushed aside the Union pickets. Crook required almost a full day to concentrate his scattered troops, now on their last of five days’ rations, before pursuing the Rebels. Mitchell ordered McCook, defending the river in northern Alabama, to Anderson’s Crossroads in the Sequatchie Valley to defend a huge wagon train already en route, but “an incessant rain” slowed McCook’s progress.”26 The second day out, October 2, on Walden’s Ridge, Wheeler divided his force. He sent Wharton and Davidson with about 2,500 cavalrymen ahead to McMinnville, a government depot filled “with stores to be transported by 24. Crook, Autobiography, 107–8; W. F. G. Shanks, “Chattanooga, and How We Held It,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 36 (1867–68): 142–46, 148–49. 25. Thomas B. Van Horne, History of the Army of the Cumberland: Its Organizations, Campaigns, and Battles, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1875), 1:387. 26. Eicher, Longest Night, 594; DuBose, Wheeler, 208–10; Avery, “Through Tennessee and around Rosecrans’ Army,” in Cozzens and Girardi, New Annals, 323.

The Chattanooga Campaign

113

wagon train to Chattanooga.” Wheeler with Martin and fifteen hundred men remained to destroy the wagon train out of Alabama, six miles away from them in the Sequatchie Valley. As described by one imaginative Rebel, the train included eight hundred “white-top wagons, drawn each by six handsomely harnessed mules,” standing stately “like so many African elephants.” They had been escorted by an infantry guard and a brigade of cavalry to the front and rear. Because rains the previous night had made “the road so slippery that the wagons could not go over the steep mountain pass,” the escort had taken refuge in the nearby hills.27 Wheeler entered the valley on October 3, a day ahead of Crook’s pursuit. The train’s escort of Illinois infantry maintained “a vigorous fire . . . for a while,” and both sides suffered casualties. But seeing themselves vastly outnumbered, the 250 bluecoats surrendered except for a few teamsters who mounted mules and escaped. Then for hours afterward squads detailed by Wheeler rode more than ten miles while burning the wagons, including sixty loaded with ordnance and others filled with quartermaster, commissary, and sutlers’ stores. They also slaughtered fifteen hundred of four thousand mules. Although Wheeler ordered his men not to plunder, but as usual such commands were rarely enforced. The Rebels gave special attention to wagons “belonging to sutlers with rich stores of all kinds.” Such bounty further slowed their dragging pace to McMinnville. McCook arrived in Sequatchie Valley in time to see the smoke from the burning wagons and the plundering of Wheeler’s rearguard. He pursued them for two miles, assaulted them across a creek, and stayed on their heels through the valley. Altogether McCook captured one hundred graybacks and recaptured eight hundred mules and a few wagons.28 Meanwhile, at McMinnville Wharton faced Maj. Michael L. Patterson’s 400-man-strong 4th Tennessee Infantry. After an hour’s skirmish claiming about thirty casualties on each side, Wharton surrounded the town and brought up his eight-gun battery. Realizing that the battle was now decided, Patterson capitulated in order to, as is often said, “save life and the eff usion 27. Carter, First Regiment, 101–3; Curry, Four Years in the Saddle, 136; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 1:388. 28. Edward G. Longacre, Mounted Raids of the Civil War (New York, 1975), 206–15; John A. Wyeth, “The Destruction of Rosecrans’s Great Wagon Train,” in The Photographic History of the Civil War, ed. Theo. F. Rodenbrough, 5 vols. (Edison, N.J., 1987), 4:158–60, 162, 164; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 39.

114

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

of blood.” Wharton destroyed the government stores as well as a train loaded with supplies attempting to escape. Wheeler rejoined Wharton on October 4. Since Wheeler did not want his men guarding prisoners, he paroled all those taken since crossing the Tennessee. He also “started them toward Kentucky line, knowing most would return to East Tennessee.” On October 5, with his column united, Wheeler swung northwest toward Murfreesboro, “the field of his glory, months before,” as one Confederate described it.29 Crook, whose men had been slowed by starvation to the point of cutting down chestnut trees for the nuts and eating sour apples for breakfast, now moved through McMinnville on the enemy’s heels. He engaged Wheeler’s rearguard two miles out on the road to Murfreesboro, described by him as “a magnificent, macadamized pike, very wide and straight,” surrounded by “gently rolling countryside as far as the eye could see.” He sent forward Eli Long’s 4th Kentucky with a saber charge that broke the Rebel position, starting what Crook called a “five mile . . . steeplechase” that cost the grays one hundred casualties. After engaging in a two-hour battle with the main column, Crook learned of Wheeler’s intention to destroy the railroad between Nashville and Murfreesboro. He moved by way of Readyville to get his command between the capital and the Confederates and to avoid being ambushed on the broad pike. Meanwhile McCook now rode less than a day behind.30 Ray’s 2nd Tennessee was part of McCook’s column then arriving at McMinnville, where the Tennesseans remained as a guard while awaiting orders. The men found themselves in “a lovely little town, beautifully situated.” Life would remain pleasant for Ray’s men except for a night raid on October 22 by Col. Thomas B. Murray and some guerrillas from Sparta, who “came yelling into town like wild men” before being repulsed. A detachment of Colonel Thornburgh’s 4th Tennessee stationed at Murfreesboro scouted east at sundown on October 4 for Wheeler, whose advance had reached Woodbury. The regiment galloped into Woodbury about midnight, surprising some graybacks “having a gay time with the young ladies.” Thornburgh established from them Wheeler’s whereabouts and returned to Murfreesboro, where the garrison had withdrawn inside the main fortification. A few days later Maj. Luther M. Black29. Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 120–24, 138; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:293; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 1:388. 30. Avery, “Around Rosecans’ Army,” 323, 327; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:295; TICW, 1:383; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 124; DuBose, Wheeler, 210; Longacre, Mounted Raids, 215–17; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 40.

The Chattanooga Campaign

115

man and another detachment of the 4th captured eight troopers returning to Wheeler’s column after taking a leave of absence to visit their families nearby.31 Meanwhile on October 5 the Rebel cavalry, in line of battle, threatened Murfreesboro for several hours. They destroyed the railroad bridge over Stones River, miles of track south of town, and futilely demanded the fort’s surrender. As Crook rode between Wheeler and Nashville, the Rebels turned counterclockwise toward Shelbyville, burning railroad bridges and two supply trains. Thornburgh caught the enemy’s rearguard, skirmished intermittently, captured a few prisoners, and scouted as far as Christiana.32 After resupplying their men at Murfreesboro, Mitchell and McCook finally united with Crook eight miles south of town, about where Thornburgh had halted his scout. That evening the men, who had been “desperate enough to eat mule, if [they] had time to cook one,” spent much of the night cooking and eating. Meanwhile Wheeler destroyed the trestle bridges along the way to Shelby ville. Galbraith’s battalion at Shelbyville, wrote one Confederate, “had torn down the courthouse on the Square, and with the debris blocked all the streets leading to it.” But upon learning the enormity of Wheeler’s column, they fled, leaving in their wake huge amounts of government stores and sutlers’ stores of Yankee camp followers. “ORA,” a Rebel war correspondent, wrote that the graycoats destroyed the government stores, and since the Yankee storekeepers “would not permit a Southerner to buy or sell without taking the oath our men made a wreck of their goods by gutting the stores . . . and emptying the goods into the streets.”33 Wheeler divided his cavalry again on October 6 at Shelbyville, sending Davidson’s division three miles below the town on the south side of the Duck River, though later warning Davidson to retreat toward Wharton if Federals approached. Wheeler placed the Texan’s division on the north side of the river farther down and sent Martin’s division on a night march to Wartrace before joining the others the next morning. Some troopers, wrote one Rebel, rode out of Shelbyville “so full of plunder that fighting had gone out of their minds.” Early on the seventh, without warning Crook suddenly attacked Davidson, who had not taken reasonable precautions, driving his division in disorder 31. Crook, Autobiography, 109–10; Curry, Four Years in the Saddle, 137, 144; McGee, 72d Indiana, 198–99; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 1:389. 32. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 31–33; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 67. 33. Crook, Autobiography, 109–10; Carter, First Regiment, 102; DuBose, Wheeler, 211; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 125; McGee, 72d Indiana, 199–200.

116

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

into the woods and causing him to lose control of his men. Dismounting one brigade, Crook had it fire volleys toward the disorganized enemy, causing further confusion. He followed this with a mounted saber charge by another brigade into and around the woods, pushing back the graybacks for miles before they finally concentrated in a cedar thicket. Now Crook repeated his pattern of dismount, fire, and mounted saber charge. All totaled, the general drove Davidson for fifteen miles.34 Crook’s attack caused Wheeler, now with Wharton’s division, to order Wharton and Martin to cut off Crook at Farmington and slow Davidson’s fleeing troopers. In a cedar thicket just before reaching the town, Crook confronted Wheeler in line of battle. Feeling that he had no other option against a superior force that could catch him if he retreated, Crook assaulted Wheeler with artillery and Wilder’s brigade of mounted infantry on foot. The Federals broke the enemy’s line and forced Wheeler to retreat. Only darkness and Minty’s failure to reinforce Crook saved the bulk of the Rebel cavalry, in Crook’s opinion. He inflicted more than three hundred casualties, mostly in Wheeler’s rearguard, at Farmington and captured another hundred men in the chase to the Tennessee River.35 On October 8, while driving the rearguard out of Cornersville, Brownlow’s cavalry captured a courier from Wheeler to one of his division commanders. The message he carried stated that the general was collecting his troops at Pulaski, still farther south. Mitchell’s command galloped toward Pulaski only to find that Wheeler had left the night before moving south to cross the Tennessee. Abandoning his weaker horses, the Federals raced to reach the river before Wheeler crossed. Because of the Rebels’ “hasty flight,” the bluecoats found the roads “lined with broken-down horses, wagons, artillery, hats and guns,” all accumulated during the raid.36 Wheeler outdistanced Mitchell that Friday and, after moving through Rogersville, crossed the Tennessee near Muscle Shoals. After midnight on 34. McGee, 72d Indiana, 201; Avery, “Around Rosecrans’ Army,” 328; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 124–25; DuBose, Wheeler, 211; Longacre, Mounted Raids, 217; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 42–43; Curry, Four Years in the Saddle, 137; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:296. 35. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:296–97; Curry, Four Years in the Saddle, 142–43; McGee, 72d Indiana, 201–2; Longacre, Mounted Raids, 221–22; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 43; Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible, 493–94; Brooksher and Snider, Glory at a Gallop, 180–82. 36. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:297; Curry, Four Years in the Saddle, 143–44; Longacre, Mounted Raids, 223; Avery, “Around Rosecrans’ Army,” 329–30.

The Chattanooga Campaign

117

October 9, he halted at a gracious-looking home. The owner introduced his widowed daughter “yet in her teens,” Mrs. Daniella Jones Sherrod, who in February 1866 at her home would become Mrs. Joseph Wheeler. The pursuit ended on October 13, and two days later Mitchell’s corps went into camp at Winchester.37 During Wheeler’s raid, at Chattanooga Bragg’s army had occupied the nearby mountain ranges of Raccoon to the west toward Bridgeport, Lookout Mountain along with Lookout Valley to the south, and Missionary Ridge to the east. The U.S. Army’s chief engineer on the scene, Brig. Gen. William F. Smith, devised a plan of relief through Lookout Valley. On the morning of October 26, Maj. Gen. Joseph H. Hooker, recently arrived from Virginia by rail, left Bridgeport with Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s XI Corps and Brig. Gen. John W. Geary’s XII Corps. Howard had with him two cavalry companies: Company G, 5th Tennessee, commanded by Capt. Robert E. Cain, and another company from the 1st Alabama Cavalry, the men of both well acquainted with the area. As Hooker followed the broken route of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad to Lookout Valley, he used his cavalry to guard his right flank and to round up enemy cavalry.38 Hooker’s troops descended into Lookout Valley the next morning and moved north along Brown’s Ferry Road toward Chattanooga. Near Wauhatchie, while hiding behind underbrush along a ridge above the railroad, the enemy fired on his cavalry. When the general summoned his infantry, the Rebels torched the railroad bridge across Lookout Creek and fled. Howard’s exhausted infantry halted one mile from Brown’s Ferry, where they found that Smith had completed a pontoon bridge across the river.39 On October 28 Hooker marched on to Brown’s Ferry. About one o’clock that afternoon, Longstreet launched an attack at Wauhatchie against General Geary, guarding the rear. Hooker dispatched a brigade as reinforcement, but by the time the troops arrived in darkness after breaking a blockade along Brown’s Ferry Road, pandemonium erupted as enemy and friend became indistinguishable. General Grant, then at Chattanooga, recalled that when Hooker’s teamsters panicked and deserted, “the mules . . . became frightened 37. Carter, First Regiment, 103. 38. John P. Dyer, “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler (Baton Rouge, 1941), 135–36, 244; Longacre, Mounted Raids, 224. 39. OR, 31(1):92–94, 97; Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, 413–14.

118

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

and breaking loose from their fastenings stampeded toward the enemy.” Taking it for a Yankee charge, the Rebels in turn stampeded. When the smoke cleared before daybreak, all the graybacks had fled. Each side suffered about four hundred casualties. Soon the Federals cleared Raccoon Mountain of Confederates, opened a closer land route, and shortly thereafter restored rail and water routes to Chattanooga.40 During the summer campaign from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga, Tories along with other Union cavalry covered Rosecrans’s right flank. Early in the Tullahoma Campaign, they successfully turned Bragg’s left flank, defended by Wheeler, at Shelbyville, where Galbraith’s battalion of Stokes’s 5th Tennessee remained. For weeks thereafter other Tories spent much of their time in the southern part of Middle Tennessee hunting bushwhackers and guerrillas and impressing blacks and horses. In the process the Union command found some allies among poor unionists and deserters from Bragg’s army who formed several independent companies that became known as the 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry (USA). Other than locating the concentration of Bragg’s army below Chattanooga, the Union cavalry—and the Tennessee Tories—were insignificant in the Battle of Chickamauga. Their role became much more important in helping the Army of the Cumberland defend its supply line during the siege of Chattanooga, where Rosecrans had taken refuge. Although Wheeler experienced initial success in destroying Union wagon trains in the Sequatchie Valley, his march northwest cost the bluecoats little railroad damage that they could not soon repair and cost him heavy casualties at Farmington while fleeing south from the state.41 The Union army’s Chattanooga campaign exemplified what William L. Barney called “enclave strategy.” Because to win the war, the Federals faced thousands of square miles to occupy or engage in a purely offensive strategy costing thousands upon thousands of lives, neither of which they had “the logistical or manpower means” to maintain, they turned to a third option of establishing enclaves within the Confederacy. In the case of Middle Tennessee, the Union enclave had to include the section’s two major north–south rail lines. With its “defensive perimeter,” the corridor from Nashville to Chattanooga would serve as “a base for further campaigns” into East Tennessee and Georgia as well “as a central point from which to establish control over contiguous terri40. OR, 31(1):94, 97–98. 41. Ibid., 95, 97–98; Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, 420.

The Chattanooga Campaign

119

tory” into those areas and northern Alabama. As the war lingered and Union forces turned to a “hard war” policy, the enclave would become a source of “cumulative destruction and bitterness” to wear down the enemy in Middle Tennessee and beyond.42 42. Barney, Flawed Victory, 33–36.

CHAPTER 7

Into East Tennessee

I

n spring 1863 Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of Ohio with orders to move from Kentucky into East Tennessee and then turn down into the Tennessee Valley to link up with Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland. Attorney Robert A. Crawford of Greeneville, whom Burnside sent to gather intelligence, reported in June that “the secession forces [had] nearly all gone to Bragg’s army” near Chattanooga and “that there [were] not 2000 men between Bristol & Knoxville.” Also, in anticipation of the move into East Tennessee, Burnside had the 1st and 2nd Tennessee Infantry at Nashville leave by steamer in March to be mounted at Camp Dick Robinson. There the regiments, with about 600 men each, received training for mounted troops and for the care of horses. They were redesignated for several months as the 1st and 2nd East Tennessee Mounted Infantry.1 In June Burnside deployed Col. William P. Sanders, a Kentucky-born, Mississippi-reared West Pointer, to destroy the enemy’s line of communication below and above Knoxville. Sanders’s fifteen hundred mounted soldiers included his 5th Kentucky and the 1st East Tennessee Mounted, commanded by Col. Robert K. Byrd, a well-to-do slaveholder and Mexican War veteran. Moving out of Mount Vernon, Kentucky, on June 14, Sanders struck at Wartburg, west of Knoxville, marched south to Loudon, then rode rapidly northeast, burning the depot at Lenoir Station, ripping up railroad tracks, and cutting telegraph lines. When the Union force approached Knoxville, Dr. James G. M. Ramsey, an agent of the Confederacy’s Treasury Department, caught a freight train bound for Abington, Virginia, with funds from his bank. After 1. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 466; Crawford to Johnson, June 11, 1863, PAJ, 6:243–44; James A. Galbraith to Johnson, June 29, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; TICW, 1:376, 379.

Into East Tennessee

121

seeing him off, an older married daughter saw men galloping from the southwest on the Kingston Road toward the Ramsey mansion. As they appeared, she asked, “ ‘Are you escaping from the Yankees?’ One rider, perhaps Colonel R. K. Byrd, who knew her, replied, ‘We are the Yankees themselves.’ ”2 Sanders’s horsemen demonstrated in front of lightly defended Knoxville, held by a battery and “parts of two regiments from Florida . . . , the local militia and [some] volunteers of Knoxville.” When a Virginia regiment arrived as reinforcement, Sanders moved on and burned the railroad bridges at Strawberry Plains and Mossy Creek. Leaving his artillery behind, he crossed Clinch Mountain back into Kentucky. Upon Dr. Ramsey’s return, he saw a “country full of disaffected citizens, seduced from their hiding places by the presence of an armed Federal force. Many of them spoke out in favor of the old flag.” Colonel Sanders credited Byrd and his guides for much of the success.3 The 2nd East Tennessee Mounted Infantry, commanded by Maj. Daniel A. Carpenter, a Clinton merchant, was part of Brig. Gen. James M. Shackelford’s force that pursued John Hunt Morgan across Ohio during early July. Shackelford and others captured most of Morgan’s cavalry in Meigs County, Ohio, near Kentucky. But Morgan himself eluded capture and pushed northward with three hundred remaining Rebels before being caught by Shackelford’s cavalry at West Point, Ohio. Carpenter was among those lauded by Shackelford. Meanwhile, to divert Burnside’s attention away from Morgan as well as to capture horses and mules, Col. John S. Scott’s Rebel brigade entered Kentucky on July 25 above Rogersville on a course north toward Lexington. He repulsed twelve hundred of Sanders’s men at Richmond, but when Scott heard of Morgan’s capture, he retreated into Tennessee.4 While these raids occurred, other Tennesseans recruited cavalry regiments from refugees at Camp Nelson below Lexington. Col. Jesse H. Strickland, whose Yankee father, William F. Strickland, had built the state capitol, raised seven companies for his 5th East Tennessee. Former state legislator Joseph H. 2. George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., 1802 to 1950, 10 vols. (New York, 1950), 2:442; Digby G. Seymour, Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War in East Tennessee (Knoxville, 1963), 77–78; OR, 23(1):386–88, 390; TICW, 1:376; TCWVQ, 1:35–38; James G. M. Ramsey, Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey Autobiography and Letters, ed. William B. Hesseltine (Knoxville, 1954), 110. 3. Ramsey, Autobiography and Letters, 108, 111. 4. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 568–69; OR, 23(1):639–45, 839–42; Eddie M. Nikazy, Forgotten Soldiers: History of the 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment (USA), 1861–1865 (Bowie, Md., 1996), 29–31.

122

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

Parsons and John Bell Brownlow, the Knoxville editor’s second son, who had left the state with him earlier in the spring, raised three companies of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry. Col. Isham Young organized four companies of the 11th Tennessee Cavalry, including recruits from William Clift’s 7th Tennessee Infantry, before the command fell to Lt. Col. Reuben A. Davis, a cattle buyer from Roane County.5 By mid-August Burnside began a slow advance with five thousand troops into East Tennessee. On September 11 he telegraphed from Cumberland Gap that he held “all East Tennessee above Loudon, and also the gaps of the North Carolina mountains.” Authorities then instructed him “to raise all the volunteers [he could] in East Tennessee [and to] select the officers.” If these officers were not “commissioned by Governor Johnson, they [were to be] by the President.” En route to Knoxville, “Byrd’s mounted men” captured forty-eight Rebels at Jacksboro. Once Burnside occupied Knoxville, he ordered the regiment south into the Tennessee River valley to guard the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad. Byrd established his headquarters at Kingston. During December the 1st Mounted operated from Dandridge, east of Knoxville, and from there to Mossy Creek. Early in 1864 the regiment was dismounted and rejoined Byrd at Kingston. There the Tennesseans remained until May, when they were sent as infantry to Georgia.6 After moving in the advance to Knoxville, Carpenter’s 2nd Mounted circled back to below Cumberland Gap. There it helped trap Brig. Gen. John W. Frazier and two thousand Rebel infantry. Later the regiment took the advance of a column into upper East Tennessee, skirmishing on September 21 at Carter’s Station. On October 10, along with others in Brig. Gen. James P. T. Carter’s brigade, the 2nd Mounted attacked two small brigades of seventeen hundred troops of Brig. Gen. John S. “Cerro Gordo” Williams, supported by a battery, at Blue Springs. The Confederates repulsed several attacks before Federal infantry and artillery arrived that evening. The combined force drove back the defenders, with losses of 216 men for Williams compared with 100 for Carter. Unknown to the Federals, the Rebels fell back during the night after Col. Henry L. Giltner seized the reins from Williams, who was “unable to sensi5. Agnes A. Gilchrist, William Strickland: Architect and Engineer, 1788–1854 (New York, 1969), 138; Jesse H. Strickland, 8th Tennessee, CSR; TICW, 1:339, 342–43, 347; Johnson to Parsons and Brownlow, June 1, 1863, PAJ, 6:235–36; Ethel Freytog and Glena Kreis Ott, A History of Morgan County, Tennessee (Wartburg, Tenn., 1961), 112. 6. Burnside to Henry Halleck, Sept. 11, 1863, Abraham Lincoln Papers, LC; Halleck to Burnside, Sept. 11, 1863, ibid.; TICW, 1:376–77.

Into East Tennessee

123

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in East Tennessee

bly command” because of his partnership with John Barleycorn. In an uneven engagement at Blountsville, Carter’s cavalry caught Williams, briefly in command again before Giltner insisted on leading, and inflicted 44 additional casualties and the loss of several wagons before pursuing the grayclads into Virginia.7 Carpenter’s 2nd Mounted returned to Rogersville as part of a brigade commanded by Col. Israel Garrard of the 7th Ohio Cavalry. When Garrard came under attack outside the town on November 6 from a superior force under Brig. Gen. Samuel Jones, he retreated, halting only long enough to order Major Carpenter to hold the post. Then Garrard left for Morristown, leaving behind “2 pieces of Philip’s Battery at Russell’s large brick house on the west side of ‘Big Creek’ supported by 3 dismounted companies of 2d. E. Tenn. Mt’d. Inf.” After crossing Big Creek, “a broad, deep & rapid stream,” capturing the battery, and engaging in “sharp fighting” for thirty minutes, the grayclads forced the surrender of Carpenter’s almost five hundred men. “Horses [were] shot dead at their hitching,” reported one Rebel, and the prisoners were shipped to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia.8 Maj. John M. Sawyer’s 1st Battalion of the 5th East Tennessee entered Knoxville as part of Burnside’s advance, while other companies of the regiment, 7. TICW, 1:380; Nikazy, Forgotten Soldiers, 34–44; OR, 31(1):288; George D. Ewing, “The Battle of Blue Springs, Tennessee,” CV 30 (Feb. 1922): 46–48. 8. Edward O. Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant, eds. William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor (Baton Rouge, 1999), 367–69.

124

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

along with the 9th and 11th Tennessee, left Kentucky for Cumberland Gap as part of Col. John F. DeCourcy’s brigade of unattached troops, which secured the gap from the Kentucky side on September 9. Supposedly because of illness, Colonel Strickland did not lead the 5th East Tennessee to the front. But once Burnside learned that the colonel had been drunk, he stripped him of his command. Sawyer’s and Capps’s battalions reunited in mid-September at Greeneville, where it was officially redesignated the 8th Tennessee Cavalry. After skirmishing in detachments at Jonesborough and near Blountville, the army assigned Capps to “detached service.” He resigned later because of “disability” (often a politic term for “cowardice”). General Shackelford recommended that the regiment “be placed in a camp of instruction.” In his opinion the “want of [good] field officers” caused some to desert and others to be “demoralized.” On November 2 the general dismounted the regiment and sent it by rail to Knoxville. After marching on Cumberland Gap with DeCourcy’s brigade, Davis’s 11th Tennessee moved above Knoxville to guard Morristown and scout toward Greeneville.9 Parsons and his 9th Tennessee guarded the Sevierville Road to Knoxville in late October and November while twenty-three-year-old John Bell Brownlow faced only female snobbery as he recruited in his home town. Brownlow had confronted far worse than rejection by southern belles since 1860 but survived: found innocent that year by reason of self-defense in a classmate’s death at Emory and Henry College; dismissed on charges of treason against the Confederacy in fall 1861 as being unfounded; and expelled from Tennessee along with his father in spring 1862, only later to become a lieutenant colonel in the Union army. Young Brownlow enrolled six hundred men and organized six companies, mostly of enlistees from Knox and its adjacent counties, especially Jefferson and Sevier. Unionists had flocked to Knoxville immediately after Burnside’s occupation of the town. When Parsons became ill and tried to reach his mother’s home north of Knoxville by “ambulance,” he fell into “the hands of the Rebels.” Brownlow assumed command of the 9th Tennessee as the regiment concentrated at Knoxville during the town’s siege by Lee’s “Old War Horse,” General Longstreet, during the last half of November.10 After settling in at Knoxville, Burnside—who had brought with him extra 9. Alvan C. Gillem to Johnson, Jan. 7, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; TICW, 1:339–41. 10. TICW, 1:343, 428, 429, 435; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Dec. 14, 1863, PAJ, 6:514–15; ibid., 282n; Ellen Renshaw House, A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Knoxville, 1996), 18; Edward Maynard to Washburn Maynard, Nov. 17, 1863, Horace Maynard Papers, UTL; McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels, 26, 94, 259n.

Into East Tennessee

125

arms and equipment—authorized the raising of additional regiments, including cavalry. His recruits included “rebel prisoners and deserters” that had “taken the [loyalty] oath,” as well as refugees arriving from North Carolina. By October 22 the general had enlisted “three thousand [unionists] in the three year service [with] half armed.” Except for “want of clothing & camp equipage,” he believed that hundreds more could have been recruited. He also enrolled twenty-five hundred men as home guards. Many three-year enlistees entered new cavalry regiments, and some of the home-guard units later became one-year mounted infantry regiments. Recruiters faced competition from Yankee regiments as well as Volunteer State regiments in Middle Tennessee seeking to fill undermanned companies. On approval of the state adjutant general’s office, several troopers of the 3rd, 4th, and 12th Tennessee received “transportation and subsistence” to raise volunteers. Competition for enlistees became so intense that Burnside issued a special order prohibiting regiments from robbing recruits from one another; threatening offending parties, stating that they would be “severely and promptly punished”; and ensuring that those improperly enlisted would be “placed where they properly belong[ed].”11 For the 13th Tennessee, composed mostly of men from counties bordering North Carolina, Sheriff John K. Miller of Carter County served as its colonel and attorney Roderick R. Butler—holder of a succession of political offices—as second in command. What began as two regiments became one when Butler’s Johnson County recruits united with Miller’s larger gathering from Carter County. The regiment attracted unionists from adjoining counties in Tennessee and North Carolina as well. Daniel Ellis of Carter County, an experienced pilot known for his “coolness, daring and shrewdness,” raised Company A, which he led from his home county to Knoxville in fall 1863. Altogether he made three trips to Knoxville with recruits. Once the regiment moved to Middle Tennessee, Ellis remained in upper East Tennessee to recruit.12 Hundreds of Tennesseans who had earlier enlisted in Union regiments such as Carpenter’s 2nd Col. Daniel Stevens’s 4th Tennessee Infantry (which 11. Burnside to Lincoln, Oct. 22, 1863, Lincoln Papers, LC; Frederick Pettit, Infantryman Pettit: The Civil War Letters of Corporal Frederick Pettit, Late of Company C, 100th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment, “The Roundheads,” 1862–1864, ed. William G. Gavin (Shippensburg, Pa., 1990), 118, 120; Special Orders Nos. 7–9, 14, 38, 41, 45, 53, 62, 73, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA. 12. TICW, 1:351; BDTGA, 2:622–23; Oliver P. Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875: Their Times and Their Contemporaries, comp. Mary B. Temple (New York, 1912), 77–78; William H. Barnes, The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical, 2 vols. (New York, 1870), 2:251–52; Temple, East Tennessee, 426; Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 208, 220, 241, 251, 255.

126

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

replaced Col. Robert Johnson’s regiment of the same designation, which converted to cavalry) now joined the 13th Cavalry. Most of its officers had soldiered in one of these infantry regiments. The only officer with cavalry experience initially was the regimental adjutant, twenty-six-year-old Brazilliah P. Stacy, formerly sergeant-major of the 7th Ohio Cavalry, appointed at the advice of Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Carter of Carter County. Stacy, a “gallant and efficient officer,” assisted with the training of the regiment.13 By 1863 “many boys 14, 15, and 16 years old at the beginning of the war . . . were eager to join the army.” Some two hundred underage males gave their age as eighteen in order to qualify for enlistment. Many joined for patriotic reasons, but additional factors usually existed, such as ties of family, kinship, and community. For most if not all—and they realized it—their food and clothing would be better in the Union army than at home or in the Confederate army. Many of the recruits opposed secession but were conscripted by Rebel forces before deserting during 1862 and 1863.14 Many North Carolina unionists crossed the border from Ashe and Mitchell counties to join the regiment, probably representing about a fifth of its men. By fall 1863 the anti-Confederate secret society Heroes of America and the peace press of publisher William W. Holden’s Raleigh Standard began to undermine confidence in the new nation, especially among citizens in the western part of the state. A bond of unity existed between unionists along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. They were connected by common beliefs, common poverty, common suffering, and now common opportunities to resist the Confederacy. They were also bound by a common environment and “separated only by an imaginary line.” While the typical Carolinian joining the 13th “came from a poor, nonslaveholding . . . household, located away from [his] county’s main commercial and political centers,” there were, as elsewhere, exceptions.15 At Strawberry Plains above Knoxville, the new recruits made “progress in drill and discipline” as the green began “to wear off.” But when General Burnside fell back to Knoxville from the upper counties, the regiment, still “practically unarmed,” found itself in danger of being captured. Once Longstreet laid siege to Knoxville, Burnside offered the men a choice of fighting their way 13. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 112–13, 117, 269–70. 14. Ibid., 125, 483–92. 15. Martin Crawford, “The Dynamics of Mountain Unionism: Federal Volunteers of Ash County, North Carolina,” in Noe and Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia, 59–60, 62–67.

Into East Tennessee

127

through to the city, “now closely invested, and [on] short rations,” and probably being captured, or journeying to Camp Nelson, Kentucky, through the Cumberland Gap. On November 21 the 13th Tennessee left for Camp Nelson, 170 miles away, the men carrying “few effects . . . across rugged mountains . . . and without rations or any adequate protection from the weather.”16 One regiment in the making that never materialized merged its 120 men into the 13th on January 1, 1864, at Camp Nelson, and its commander, George W. Doughty, an East Tennessean residing in Georgia in 1861, became major of the 13th. Doughty had recruited 60 men at Glasgow, Kentucky, during summer 1863; left for Knoxville in the fall; and completed a company en route. A large number of his soldiers were Confederate prisoners captured in 1862 by Morgan’s Federals at Cumberland Gap. Because of this circumstance, he promised never to surrender them.17 At Knoxville Burnside detailed some of Doughty’s men to escort the mail from there to Cumberland Gap and others to scout both sides of the Holston River for Longstreet’s army until the Confederates virtually surrounded the city and the residents faced starvation. But Longstreet too long relied on a faulty map that left “the channel of the French Broad . . . open . . . to the crafts . . . of the enemy in town . . . and friends above” town, according to Dr. Ramsey. After Burnside’s men went on “one-fourth rations,” Doughty, “being well-acquainted with the country,” sent out his troopers for help. For a week and a half, they called upon farmers (with a promise of eventual payment) to bring to designated points all the “flour, bacon, hogs, cattle and . . . produce” that could be found. Once collected by “such old men as [Doughty] could press into the service,” the Tories loaded the food on boats and every night after midnight floated them down the river to Knoxville. Reporting on the service of Doughty and his men, Burnside wrote: “When the siege was raised we had five times as many rations as when it commenced, and could have held out at least a month longer.”18 After leaving Chattanooga on November, Longstreet’s 10,000 infantrymen had joined Wheeler’s 5,000 cavalrymen riding from northern Alabama to Loudon, twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville. Moving in the advance three days later, “Fightin’ Joe” attempted to scale the heights above the Holston River overlooking Knoxville. But being repulsed by Sanders’s cavalry backed 16. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 116–19. 17. Ibid., 124–25. 18. Ibid., 126–29; Pettit, Infantryman Pettit, 128; Ramsey, Autobiography and Letters, 150.

128

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

by artillery, he later joined Longstreet north of the town. Sanders was killed in a delaying action the next day. After awaiting reinforcement from Chattanooga and southwestern Virginia, Longstreet struck the highly fortified and well-entrenched garrison on November 29 at Fort Sanders, renamed for the recently deceased commander. The “bastioned earthwork on a hill” manned by “440 men and 12 guns” was fronted by “an almost vertical slope [of] 15 feet” rising over “a ditch 12 feet wide and . . . eight feet deep.” In the one-sided slaughter of the assault, Confederate losses numbered more than eight hundred, while Yankee losses numbered only thirteen. When Longstreet learned on December 3 of Sherman’s march to rescue Burnside, he retreated to the northeast and eventually established winter quarters at Greeneville, Tennessee; Sherman returned to Chattanooga.19 Although only a few hundred Federals fought in the battle for Fort Sanders and only a few thousand engaged in direct combat during the campaign, Burnside reported his force at Knoxville as being “about 12,000 effective men, exclusive of the new recruits of loyal Tennesseans.” The Tories at Knoxville included Sawyer’s 8th; Brownlow’s 9th; the 8th Tennessee Infantry of Col. Felix A. Reeve, which arrived in September; more than a hundred members of Carpenter’s 2nd Mounted, most of whom had escaped after being captured at Rogersville; and a scattering of regiments in the making called the Tennessee Brigade and placed under the command of Ohio colonel John Casement.20 Little is known of the experiences of the approximately two thousand Tory troops during Longstreet’s siege other than they mostly served in the Provisional Brigade, an odd assortment of units of different sizes, commanded by Col. William A. Hoskins of the 12th Kentucky Infantry. Brig. Gen. Orlando M. Poe, Burnside’s chief engineer and arranger of the town’s defenses, placed Hoskins’s command on the right side of the line of battle, where as it happened, as Pvt. Samuel Shrader of the 9th Tennessee put it, the men “were not in the thickest of the battle.” Before the assault the Tories undoubtedly performed the same tasks as other Union soldiers, joined by two hundred civilians and many contraband, such as the digging of trenches and the erection of fortifications. Like others, they were “half fed, half clothed, and half frozen.” 19. McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels, 160–71; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 297, 466–68; B&L, 3:731–52; Eicher, Longest Night, 614–17; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, 3 vols. (1942–44; reprint, New York, 1994), 3:286–98. 20. B&L, 3:752; PAJ, 5:181n; Alvan C. Gillem to Johnson, Jan. 7, 1864, ibid., 6:540–43; Nikazy, Forgotten Soldiers, 43; TICW, 1:380.

Into East Tennessee

129

One day Brownlow’s 9th became desperate enough to tear down a stable for firewood.21 Following the end of the siege on December 4, Burnside dispatched Casement and the motley Tennessee Brigade to guard the hundreds of Rebels captured to be interned at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, below Lexington. Shortly after the Tennesseans reached the camp on December 27, Governor Johnson sent General Gillem from Nashville to assess the regiments. Gillem found that the men had arrived “on foot, half naked[,] armed with . . . old arms” and were now living in “Dog tents” in “below zero” weather. On his recommendation that small units be merged into large ones and that all the troops be sent by rail to Nashville, Johnson merged the six companies of the 10th East Tennessee into Sawyer’s 8th Tennessee after the troops arrived in Nashville. Col. Samuel K. N. Patton, an iron manufacturer and legislator from Washington County, assumed command of the combined regiment about April 1 at Columbia.22 After their 350-mile pursuit of Wheeler, Brownlow’s boys at Winchester “enjoyed the luxury of . . . wearing blacked boots and ‘boiled shirts’ ” for a month. But in November 1863, along with others in McCook’s cavalry division in Middle Tennessee, they were ordered to East Tennessee. The division now included Brig. Gen. Archibald P. Campbell’s First Brigade and Col. Oscar H. LaGrange’s Second Brigade. Soon Campbell’s command camped near Alexandria and Liberty. There his men received “fresh horses and a new outfit of clothing” as well as pay. They also waited for Capt. Eli Lilly and his 18th Indiana Battery, away at Nashville obtaining seventy-five strong horses. McCook sent Brownlow and his men to McMinnville to watch for Wheeler. Reportedly they “stabled their horses in the public buildings, and quartered [themselves] in the houses,” making “the town . . . indescribably filthy.”23 A week later McCook detached the 1st Tennessee and a battalion of the 9th Pennsylvania to rout Col. John M. Hughs, still near Sparta recruiting, conscripting, and collecting stragglers. Under Brownlow’s command the cavalrymen rode in a cold, “drizzly rain” much of the day before encountering Hughs’s subordinate, Lt. Col. Oliver P. Hamilton, above Sparta at the hamlet of Yankeetown. The Federals drove the outgunned enemy for eight miles, killing nine and wounding twice that many while losing five killed. Finding Caney Fork 21. B&L, 3:752; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 656–57; McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels, 160– 64; TCWVQ, 1:116; RAGT, 521, 525. 22. Gillem to Johnson, Jan. 7, 1864, Johnson Papers, TSLA; TICW, 1:340; BDTGA, 2:98, 709–10. 23. TICW, 1:319; Carter, First Regiment, 108–9.

130

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

River too high to ford, Brownlow located a small flatboat to ferry some of his men across; others had to “unsaddle the horses and force them to swim the river.” They then galloped on to Sparta and took the town without firing a shot.24 Early the next morning Brownlow sent Lt. Nelson Bowman of Company K and a small detachment on a scout. Champ Ferguson’s guerrillas drove the bluecoats back, killing four, including one or two they had captured. Once Bowman reported, Brownlow ordered out his entire force with instructions to “take no prisoners.” Galloping hard, the horsemen soon caught up with Ferguson’s band, which often assisted Hughs and Hamilton. The Federals engaged the guerrillas in a running pursuit, killing nine and wounding twenty while losing four killed and five wounded.25 Brownlow’s command remained in abandoned houses at Sparta until McCook’s main column, including supply wagons traveling on muddy roads from Nashville, reached the town. Maj. Gen. Washington L. Elliott, cavalry commander of the Army of the Cumberland, accompanied the division. McCook rode slowly out of Sparta on December 7. Before reaching Crossville two days later, partisans killed eight guards while raiding the sutler train at the rear of Campbell’s brigade. With two more days of riding, the column reached Kingston, situated in a pleasant valley at the confluence of the Clinch and Holston rivers. Here the men found fodder for their horses and awaited the wagons.26 On December 14 McCook’s column moved east “in a cold, drizzly rain” toward Knoxville, knowing by now that Longstreet had abandoned his siege. The next day and a few miles from Knoxville, hometown of Brownlow and many of his men, McCook prepared for a “grand entry.” He placed the 1st Tennessee in the advance, preceded only by the 2nd Indiana Cavalry’s band. Riding through Longstreet’s abandoned works, they arrived at midafternoon. As they paraded in platoons down Gay Street, the horsemen were welcomed by unionists and reviewed by Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, Burnside’s successor. They turned east onto Cumberland Street and passed Brownlow’s home. Here the 1st Tennessee gave Parson Brownlow and his waving family three cheers. For weeks the Parson, while still a Treasury agent, had published the government-subsidized 24. Carter, First Regiment, 109–10. 25. Ibid., 111. 26. Ibid., 112–13.

Into East Tennessee

131

Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator on a new press confiscated in Alexandria, Tennessee.27 McCook’s brigades took separate routes northeast and reunited at Strawberry Plains. After a three o’clock reveille and “a hasty breakfast” the next morning, Campbell’s brigade mounted and rode through Flat Gap, moving southeast toward Dandridge, along the west bank of the French Broad River. As the brigade awaited Colonel Garrard’s regiment near Dandridge the next morning, the colonel sent an appeal for help. Knowing the roads, Brownlow’s men took the advance, but when they could not find Garrard, Campbell retreated toward New Market. Being pressed by the enemy, Campbell had his battery and cavalry halt and fire at close range while the 1st Tennessee charged the Rebels with sabers. Brownlow’s men suffered five killed or mortally wounded and six wounded as they drove the graycoats “back in confusion.”28 On a windy, frigid Christmas Day, McCook’s brigades crossed Mossy Creek and established a line of battle near the village of Mossy Creek before dining on “raw bacon, hard tack and water.” McCook encountered limited resistance the next day as he marched near the railroad northeast to Talbott’s Station. For three days he held his brigades there on the road to Morristown. On December 29 he placed Lilly’s battery on a hill five hundred yards northeast of Mossy Creek bridge and sent Campbell with LaGrange’s brigade toward Dandridge. McCook ordered only Brownlow’s 1st Tennessee and Benjamin Smith’s 2nd Michigan Cavalry to remain and if attacked to fall back to Mossy Creek.29 At midmorning Maj. Gen. William T. Martin struck the Federals. Campbell delayed Martin by retreating as slowly as possible toward Mossy Creek. About a mile from town, at Stokely Williams’s “large, two-story, brick house,” he ordered the 2nd Michigan to take cover behind some brush and to open fire when the enemy reached within twenty yards. He instructed Brownlow to move around the house and be ready to fire at the center of Martin’s column. After an exchange of artillery fire, the Rebel cavalry moved against Campbell’s left. But instead of falling back, Brownlow charged Martin’s line, using sabers, and returned with twenty-six prisoners. He later explained that “in violation of orders from his superior, General Campbell, [he] led a charge upon the enemy, 27. Ibid., 114; Coulter, William G. Brownlow, 250–51; Pettit, Infantryman Pettit, 176. 28. Carter, First Regiment, 119–24; OR, 31(1):635–38; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:349. 29. Carter, First Regiment, 126–28.

132

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

in which he completely broke the [enemy’s] lines, recaptured two pieces of the 18th Indiana Battery, and saved the entire command from disaster.” When LaGrange rejoined Campbell around two o’clock that afternoon, the enemy fell back and was pursued for about four miles before darkness fell.30 At Mossy Creek the enemy killed or mortally wounded nine of Brownlow’s soldiers and wounded nine others. Those killed included Capt. E. J. Cannon of Company C, a man reputedly of “unflinching courage,” who died “almost in sight of his home.” Reporting on this action, McCook wrote: “The gallant 1st East Tennessee Cavalry and their brave young commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brownlow, added new laurels to their brilliant reputation by the splendid sabre charge they made.” Afterward the Tories scouted in Cooke and Sevier counties. In mid-January 1864 General Campbell detached the 1st Tennessee to fight Confederate Cherokees.31 Since September 1863, small Federal raids had crossed into western North Carolina. These incursions caused Gov. Zebulon B. Vance to assign his brother, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Vance, as commander of the area’s defense. Cherokees and a few whites led by General Vance had crossed the mountains from North Carolina and camped along Cosby’s Creek in Cooke County. Campbell ordered Brownlow to combine his troops with those of Col. William J. Palmer (15th Pennsylvania and 10th Ohio Cavalry) at Pigeon River and march toward Vance’s camp. The Union force rode carefully in subzero weather over an icy road to surprise the Rebels on January 14, 1864, with a bold charge as the enemy awaited expected reinforcements. They captured General Vance and fifty other men.32 On January 22 Palmer and Brownlow moved against one of Longstreet’s wagon trains collecting forage east of the French Broad River across from Dandridge. They overtook the wagons, many with “U.S.” painted on them, near Muddy Creek. The cavalry surprised the escorting infantrymen and shot some guards who refused to surrender. Palmer ordered the teamsters to turn the twenty-four wagons around and to “drive for ‘Uncle Sam’ ” toward Sevierville.33 30. Ibid., 128–33; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:349–50; OR, 31(1):547–48, 646–61, 21(3):388–90, 504–6; Frank J. Welcher, The Union Army, 1861–1865: Organization and Administration, 2 vols. (Bloomington, Ind., 1989, 1993), 2:653–54. 31. Carter, First Regiment, 132. 32. Ibid., 134–35; John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2000), 123–32. 33. Carter, First Regiment, 136–37.

Into East Tennessee

133

On the afternoon of January 26, when scouts out of Sevierville found Martin’s cavalry advancing on the Fair Garden Road, McCook ordered his entire division to Sevierville. Four miles beyond Fair Garden, they found the enemy at the east fork of the Pigeon River. Martin opened the engagement with an artillery bombardment from hills north of the river. What then became an artillery duel ceased at dusk. When the fog lifted the next morning, Campbell’s brigade crossed the river and pursued the enemy, retreating to McNutt’s covered bridge over the east fork. Despite heavy Union shelling, the Rebel position remained unbroken. McCook sent LaGrange’s brigade to another crossing two miles away to link up with Campbell, causing Martin to retreat a mile beyond the bridge. Brownlow, as ordered, charged and penetrated their line.34 Unfortunately he pursued ahead of his men and became surrounded in the dark. Almost all his troops made it back except the colonel. But after being captured, Brownlow passed himself off as “only a poor private” and bribed his guard with a gold watch to let him escape. When he returned to camp, “cheer after cheer went up from the regiment.” Brownlow was the idol of his men, and “a general favorite of the entire brigade.” Altogether McCook’s division lost twenty-eight killed and wounded at Fair Garden, while Longstreet reported that Martin was “driven back with the loss of two hundred killed, wounded and missing.”35 On January 29 the army ordered McCook’s cavalry to Sevierville south of Knoxville. At Cleveland for several weeks, the 1st Tennessee enjoyed regular camp life. Each Sunday morning the “Father of the Regiment,” as they called Chaplain Holtsinger, preached to the men. General Elliott replaced the 9th Pennsylvania in Campbell’s brigade with the 8th Iowa Cavalry, commanded by Col. Joseph B. Dorr. Although Brownlow’s men missed their friends from Pennsylvania, they soon appreciated the “Persimmon Knockers,” as they called the Iowans.36 During early 1864 Davis’s 11th Tennessee served with units from Kentucky, first guarding Mulberry Gap and then Cumberland Gap. At Mulberry Gap the Tennesseans scouted on the Virginia side in detachments out of Ball’s Bridge. Confederates of Brig. Gen. William E “Grumble” Jones’s command captured virtually the entire 1st Battalion, 11th Tennessee, including the severely wounded Davis, five miles east of Cumberland Gap on February 24. After re34. Ibid., 138–41; OR, 32(1):130–50; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:352. 35. Carter, First Regiment, 141–44. 36. Ibid., 144, 148–49.

134

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

covering, Davis escaped and returned to Cumberland Gap in mid-March to take command of his other two battalions, ten companies of 252 undisciplined men without horses. They remained there without mounts into 1865 except for “a large number” who on occasion went “absent without authority.”37 Like unionist Alabamians in summer 1863, as Union forces appeared close to western North Carolina and North Georgia, anti-Confederates from these sections, as well as Tennesseans with connections in those areas—often already engaged as guides and bushwhackers—sought commissions to raise mounted troops. Some formed companies within Tennessee regiments, while others created units closely identified with one of the other states. Overall they played small (albeit fascinating) roles in the greater drama.38 One such individual was Capt. Goldman Bryson, operating in the counties where Tennessee bordered both North Carolina and Georgia. In August 1863 he organized Bryson’s Scouts and Guides with recruits from all three states at Cherokee County, North Carolina. His aims, according to friends, included assisting anti-Confederates to avoid conscription and piloting refugees through Federal lines. To support his men he foraged off his enemies, who considered Bryson and his band bushwhackers and “mounted robbers.” In late September 1863 at Knoxville, General Burnside had these men mustered into the army as Company A of a new unit called the 1st Tennessee National Guard. In midOctober Bryson and his men, numbering about 150, briefly occupied Murphy, the county seat of Cherokee, before Burnside ordered him to recruit in “North Carolina and [the] vicinity” prior to reporting to him.39 Alerted to the situation, Bragg sent Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn, commanding cavalry in East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, to capture Bryson. On October 27 Vaughn ambushed the Tory and his horsemen east of Murphy, killing two and capturing seventeen men along with thirty horses. Forty other men escaped and either fled to Knoxville or to their homes as did Bryson, who retreated to his mountain home at Six Mile in Monroe County, Tennessee. Vaughn sent “part-Indian” Lt. Campbell H. Taylor and nineteen Cherokees be37. TICW, 1:347–48; OR, 32(3):98; 11th Tennessee, CSR. 38. Amann, Personnel of the Civil War, 2:231–34; TICW, 1:317, 413; Jonathan Dean Sarris, “Anatomy of an Atrocity: The Madden Branch Massacre and Guerrilla Warfare in North Georgia, 1861–1865,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 77 (winter 1993): 698; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 103–4, 123. 39. Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 103–4, 123; TICW, 1:413; Amann, Personnel of the Civil War, 2:231, 233; copies from Goldman Bryson file and Boyd Frauds file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library.

Into East Tennessee

135

longing to Col. William H. Thomas’s North Carolina Legion in pursuit. They tracked Bryson to his home on the twenty-eighth, shot him dead when he ran, and captured one of his horse soldiers named John Ledford. Taylor removed from Bryson’s uniform (later divided among his Cherokees) his orders from Burnside and other papers, including his muster roll, which was later “used for bushwacking purposes.” The next day Taylor’s men hanged Ledford in the public square at Murphy and paraded through the streets with parts of Bryson’s uniform.40 Despite owning a few slaves, attorney William C. Fain of Morganton, Georgia, near the Tennessee line, opposed disunion as a delegate to his state’s secession convention. In 1862 he left Fannin County, where two-thirds of the people that year reportedly remained loyal. In March 1864 he received authority from General Stanley, now commanding the First Division of the IV Corps in the Army of the Cumberland, then near Cleveland, Tennessee, to raise a regiment in North Georgia and South Carolina. Soon, perhaps while using his Masonic lodge connections, he recruited at least part of four companies. But Fain was captured by sixty Confederate guerrillas led by Capt. John P. Gatewood, now operating out of Georgia, near Ducktown in Polk County on April 6. His captors took him three miles to Pittman Ferry, where he tried to escape and was shot in the head. Later Masonic friends from three states, following their funeral rites, buried him at Hiawassee, Georgia.41 In mid-February 1864 Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, now commanding in East Tennessee, sent Capt. George W. Kirk of the 5th East Tennessee, which was being merged into the 8th Tennessee, “to raise a regiment of troops in the easternmost of Tennessee and westernmost of North Carolina.” Kirk, a twenty-six-year-old carpenter from Greeneville, earlier piloted refugees out of North Carolina and the upper counties of East Tennessee. For the new regiment, designated the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, he had to provide his own horses by impressing them from others. Almost all of his officers were Tennesseans, while most of his enlistees hailed from North Carolina. On a raid in April to Burnsville, fifteen miles into North Carolina, Kirk’s troopers 40. Copies from Goldman Bryson file and Boyd Frauds file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 123. 41. Sarris, “Anatomy of an Atrocity,” 688, 689, 696, 698; copy of William C. Fain file from Pension Bureau, Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library; clipping from Cherokee Scout and Clay County Progress, Aug. 29, 1974, ibid.

136

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

overpowered the resident home guards. According to Confederate reports, his soldiers recruited “swarms of men liable to conscription,” amounting to a total of “four companies of thieves and tories.”42 In May, Kirk and three men passed through Greeneville and returned to Knoxville in ten days “with about 130 recruits, some 20 or 30 Cherokee Indians included.” After “he armed clothed and equipped” his soldiers, he led them to his home county of Washington. There Kirk “whip’t [a] command consisting of 210 men” commanded by a “Col. Cox.” He also killed Capt. Thomas H. Osborne of Osborne Scouts, operating along the border of North Carolina, and fifteen graybacks as well as wounding many others. In addition he seized a few horses, some small arms, and captured a handful of prisoners.43 The following June, Kirk, with about 130 men armed “magnificently,” mostly with “Spencer repeating rifles,” skirmished briefly before capturing Camp Vance for junior reserves at Morganton, seventy miles from Tennessee. He recruited some of his prisoners along with some deserters in the guardhouse. Turning back west, he skirmished with home guards fourteen miles from Morganton near Brown Mountain. Firing from higher ground, Kirk’s men shot at least six guardsmen, fatally wounding William W. Avery, Burke County’s largest slaveholder. Although Kirk failed to destroy the Yadkin River railroad bridge, as Schofield desired, he did manage to burn other Confederate property and bring out of the state “132 [prisoners], together with 32 negroes and 48 horses and mules [and] 40 recruits.” He also sent individual recruiters, such as 1st Lt. Gideon S. Smoot, a native Tarheel and former sergeant in the 10th Tennessee Cavalry, to comb western North Carolina for enlistments.44 While East Tennessee, as expected, was a rich area for recruitment during Burnside’s tenure in command (until December 1863), both new and experienced state regulars provided only a fraction of the men needed to redeem the section. But other natives manned two important organizations established by Burnside. The general named Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Carter as provost marshal for East Tennessee, with “jurisdiction in all civil matters.” Carter in turn appointed a deputy provost for each county, thirteen of whom were residents. 42. Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 70–71; OR, 53(1):326–27; J. K. Miller to Johnson, Jan. 30, 1865, PAJ, 7:446–47. 43. Blackston McDaniel to Johnson, July 7, 1864, PAJ, 7:19–21; ibid., 236n. 44. Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 70–73; Shepherd M. Dugger, The War Trails of the Blue Ridge (Banner Elk, N.C., 1932), 126–33; Fisher, War at Every Door, 68, 87; OR, 39(1):232–33, 235–37; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 134–35.

Into East Tennessee

137

Burnside also created the musket-armed “National Guard of Tennessee” to replace the prewar militias, assist the regular military and deputy provosts, and fight guerrilla bands. It was always within the context of these two organizations that local events and issues, such as irregular warfare, suits and countersuits, and the franchise, were played out during the remainder of the war.45 The mounting of the 1st and 2nd East Tennessee Mounted Infantry during 1863 proved to be more symbolic than valuable, though it also proved tragic for Carpenter’s five hundred men of the 2nd who surrendered at Big Creek. The new cavalry regiments out of Kentucky, as well as those recruited at home, were too green to be very useful. In the 5th East Tennessee’s case, its colonel, Jesse Strickland, was corrupt and cowardly, while his second in command, Thomas Capps, was only cowardly. Some officers, such as George Doughty, who helped feed Knoxville, were heroic. John Miller and George Kirk, both unquestionably brave men, initiated a light but steady flow of enlistees out of North Carolina. James Brownlow’s 1st Tennessee gained its reputation by brilliantly demonstrating its fiber and valor at Dandridge, Mossy Creek, and Fair Garden. 45. Fisher, War at Every Door, 132–35.

CHAPTER 8

The Cumberlands

A

t Tracy City in September 1863, Col. William B. Stokes of the 5th Tennessee expressed regrets to Governor Johnson for having to abandon what he called “my section of [the] country.” Stokes accused the 22nd Tennessee Infantry’s Lt. Col. Thomas B. Murray, a Sparta attorney detached with two hundred men to recruit and mount his unit, of “prowling around in the counties of DeKalb, Warren, Smith, and Wilson, committing depredations upon Union families.” Writing from personal urgency, he claimed, “They have stolen all my stock, have attempted to burn my house, insulted my family, [and] fired on my wife.” Unlike Yankees at Carthage and McMinnville, Stokes’s men— whose families he wanted to protect—could help because they knew “every crossroad and by-path throughout that section.”1 Murray’s men, like other detachments of the sort, had instructions to recruit as well as round up conscripts, stragglers, and deserters. But often when away from regular forces with stricter discipline, Rebel recruiters waged their own private war of plunder and revenge. Having no line of supply, some foraging no doubt grew out of the necessity to live off the countryside. But often the cavalrymen combined with guerrillas, as Murray did, and their behavior became indistinguishable from one another in preying on civilians.2 Col. John M. Hughs, a former hotel owner from Livingston commanding the 25th Tennessee Infantry (CSA), also recruited in the area. He had been ordered by General Bragg during summer 1863 to take a squad of mounted sol1. Stokes to Johnson, Sept. 22, 1863, PAJ, 6:383–84; Stokes to Col. C. Goddard, Sept. 27, 1863, quoted in Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 31–32; Cooling, “People’s War,” in Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 117, 123; OR, 32(1):55–57. 2. Cooling, “People’s War,” 123.

The Cumberlands

139

diers into Middle Tennessee to round up stragglers, conscripts, and deserters. With the assistance of local soldiers such as Lafayette “Fayette” McDowell of White County, his command swelled to over one hundred men. But he spent much of his time accompanying guerrillas in hunting down “troublesome” Tories, “emboldened” by the Union invasion of East Tennessee. Still he tried to disassociate himself from the atrocities committed by guerrillas. It is unclear how many of Hughs’s soldiers were regulars, and even then, as he admitted, they “came and went pretty [well] as they pleased and . . . regular discipline could not be enforced.” On a number of occasions, to supply his force Hughs raided into Kentucky, striking at Glasgow, Monticello, and Scottsville. He also fought Union regulars in the Cumberlands, such as those of James Brownlow and Stokes, before crossing enemy lines to reach the Army of Tennessee at Dalton, Georgia, in April 1864.3 Stokes got a chance to protect his own on November 10, 1863, when General Thomas ordered his regiment to Nashville. Once reorganized the general intended to base it at Sparta, often a rendezvous for an assortment of mounted Rebels. But Robert Galbraith, recently stationed with one battalion at Shelbyville, claimed that the “officers and men [had] publicly announc[ed] that they would not serve under [Stokes].” To avoid another confrontation and confident that he could recruit additional companies, Stokes suggested that each battalion of the 5th Tennessee become a separate regiment.4 Thomas and Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau, commanding at Nashville, agreed. They felt that the two battalions would “never be of service together.” Each command wanted to defend its home territory under its own leader, favoring either DeKalb or Bedford County and either Stokes or Galbraith. Governor Johnson, however, opposed dividing the regiment. Meanwhile General Grant at Chattanooga urged that Stokes “be sent Immediately to clear out the country between Carthage & Sparta of guerillas.” In late February 1864, after Stokes and the 5th Tennessee had been ordered to Sparta, Galbraith resigned.5 Minister-farmer John W. Bowen of Smith County described the 5th’s new area of operations as “that large district of country . . . lying east of the Caney 3. James T. Siburt, “Colonel John M. Hughs: Brigade Commander and Confederate Guerrilla,” THQ 51 (summer 1992): 87–95; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” in McDowell and Blankenship, Fiddles in the Cumberlands, 169 (Feb. 18, 1863). 4. TICW, 1:331; Thomas to Johnson, Jan. 9, 1864, PAJ, 6:553–54. 5. TICW, 1:331; Grant to Johnson, Jan. 24, 1864, PAJ, 6:591.

140

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

Ford river, and west of the Cumberland mountains; and south of the Cumberland river, and north of a line on which [lay] the towns of McMinnville & Sparta.” The region consisted of forested hills and mountains, swiftly moving streams, and fertile valleys yielding plentiful grain crops. Rebels used the area, never really occupied except for a few outposts, for sanctuary and for obtaining foodstuffs and horses. It soon became, as preacher J. H. Grimes of Putnam County described it, a place of “rendezvous for bushwhackers and guerillas on both sides.” As he recalled, “stealing, robbery, and murder was the order of the day.”6 After a reconnaissance up the Cumberland River in January 1864— accompanied by “200 sharp shooters and two gunboats” and some “Union Guard” officers from the area—Lt. Col. Andrew J. Cropsey of the 129th Illinois Infantry, sent at Grant’s request, reported that “the Country along the river [was] pretty much cleared of guerillas except [for] Jackson County.” But the area south of the river, where Hughs, Hamilton, and Ferguson made their headquarters, he wrote, was “[k]ept . . . in a perfect terror,” and from there the trio “occasionally [made] robbing raids into distant parts . . . , especially up into Kentucky.” Cropsey believed that a limited number of Union troops stationed above Carthage could clear “the navigation of the Cumberland,” prevent the conscription of “hundreds of deserters from the rebel army,” and connect “the entire region . . . to the Union Cause.”7 In January 1863 Elam Huddleston had met his death at the hands of Captain Ferguson while the latter served as a guide and scout for John Hunt Morgan. As he returned from a raid into Kentucky, Ferguson heard at Columbia, Kentucky, that the Huddleston gang intended “to bushwhack Morgan’s rear the next day.” He located the guerrilla leader’s house, set fire to the log dwelling, and shot Huddleton as he fired from the upper floor. Then after Moses Huddleston, who had already surrendered, brought out his brother while he was still breathing, Ferguson shot Elam to death. Later that same night Ferguson stabbed to death two other Huddleston followers, Peter and Allan Zachery, at the home of Rufus Dowdy.8 In the aftermath Dowdy and other Huddleston followers gave their allegiance to Dave Beaty, known by now to his enemies as “bold, astute, ferocious, 6. Bowen to Johnson, Jan. 15, 1864, PAJ, 6:558–59; J. H. Grimes, Recollections of a Long Life (Lebanon, Tenn., 1930), 21. 7. Cropsey to Johnson, Jan. 6, 1864, PAJ, 6:538–39. 8. Duke, Reminiscences, 122–25; William E. Sloan Diary, Mar. 9, 1863, TSLA.

The Cumberlands

141

and unrelenting.” On two occasions a year apart, in July 1863 and July 1864, Beaty sighted Champ Ferguson, whom he had known for twenty years, and about seventy-five men driving impressed horses and mules. Beaty admitted shooting at Ferguson’s men “while lying concealed in the bushes.” Once he took a wounded grayback home, only to see him escape. “Thereafter,” he said, “we never took any prisoners.”9 Ferguson, like Beaty, was widely known, as his horse trading and hunting necessitated his traveling throughout the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee and into Kentucky. Unlike his mother and nine siblings in Kentucky, he favored the Confederacy over the Union. Ferguson initially went with his state to escape a murder indictment for which he had posted a $3,000 bond with “a mortgage on several slaves and four tracts of land.” He was charged with the pocketknife murder of Constable James Reed of Jamestown, Tennessee, in a “camp meeting fight.” For joining the Confederate cause he was, in his own words, “promise[d] that all prosecution in the case would be abandoned.” Nonetheless, just to be on the safe side, months later Ferguson found the circuit-court minute book in County Registrar George S. Kingston’s home, where it was held for safekeeping and “cut out the pages of his indictment.”10 Ferguson was more prone to feel guilty about what he did not do. More often his murders were preemptive actions, killing someone he claimed was out to kill him. Once when he released a unionist because the man was not a bushwhacker, Ferguson later regretted it. “I am afraid I have done wrong,” he confessed, “for he is the very best shot in this part of the country; and if he does turn bushwhacker, he will kill a man at every shot.”11 Matters changed somewhat for Beaty in early fall 1863, when General Burnside directed him to go to “the mountain forks and bushwhack the Rebels and keep the roads open in exchange for all the ammunition he and his men needed.” In September 1864 General Gillem offered to have Beaty’s men “mustered into the United States service.” In November Beaty called at the state adjutant general’s office in Nashville and was given authority to raise a battalion of mounted infantry for three years’ service and promised “the muster of his (16) men.” But his men were never mustered and he never raised the battalion. Some of his followers had by that time joined one of the one-year units, and 9. Duke, Reminiscences, 123; Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 73–74. 10. Daniel W. Barefoot, Let Us Die Like Brave Men: Behind the Dying Words of Confederate Warriors (Winston-Salem, N.C., 2005), 260. 11. Bromfield L. Ridley, “Champ Ferguson,” CV 7 (Oct. 1899): 443.

142

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

others by 1865 would not make such a long-term commitment to the military. But his small band continued operations into spring 1865. As with Union cavalry units, some of Beaty’s men engaged in mopping-up activities. In March 1865 his company marched into White County and broke into squads to inquire about “Rebels and guns, etc.”12 Altogether Tinker Dave and his small band, in his estimation, “[k]illed 25 or more during the War.” The killings never bothered Beaty, a man “covered with scars received in battle.” Once in conversation toward the end of the war, a neighbor “enquired for the news. ‘Nothing new’ said Tinker.” But after a moment he added, “Well, I believe our men did kill a lot of the Hammock gang this morning.” On occasion, though perhaps to a lesser degree than Ferguson, Beaty and his men seized more than food and fresh mounts. One Confederate later recalled that “[j]ust before the war ended,” Beaty, who earlier had demanded a meal for his men from this family, “came back and took all our meat, and all our cattle.” He then sold the cattle in Kentucky.13 On one occasion, according to unionist Mary Catherine Sproul, a squad of Rebels commanded by Capt. William Windall of Maj. Fred Daugherty’s command “set out to kill ‘Tinker’ Beaty” and to “take everything he had.” They were determined to “bring Fentress down to Overton and put it in the Southern Confederacy.” But Beaty and about fifteen of his men stationed themselves on a hill above an area through which Windall’s squad had to pass. When the Rebels rode by, Beaty’s men “raised the war whoop and fired a volley.” They killed a lieutenant and captured one prisoner before the others took flight, “dropping Canteens, blankets guns Sabres hats coats and everything which interfered with their getting away.”14 One small band of guerrillas that Beaty’s men later attacked would occasionally ride through Fentress County “to steal horses, plunder houses and kill innocent [Union] men,” then return “to their places of deposit.” Soon they gathered at a small church on a nonmeeting Sunday “for the purpose of playing cards, Swaping Stolen horses, and inventing plans to demolish the Union citizens.” When Tinker Dave learned of these Sunday meetings, he and his men waited for the miscreants. But the bushwhackers spotted the unionists 12. Gillem to Beaty, Sept. 9, 1863, Letter Book, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Edwards S. Richards to Johnson, Nov. 19, 1864, PAJ, 7:305–06. 13. Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 69; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” 268–69 (Mar. 12, 1865). 14. Schroeder, “Writings of a Tennessee Unionist,” 264.

The Cumberlands

143

near the church, and Beaty’s troop only “[k]illed two, and badly wounded two others” before the rest “fled in every direction.”15 Stokes departed Nashville with 150 cavalrymen on January 29, 1864, riding first to Alexandria and camping at the fairgrounds. There he received word by courier from Brig. Gen. Eleazer A. Paine, commanding at Gallatin, to meet him at Carthage. But when Stokes arrived, he found that Paine and Col. H. K. McConnell had gone up the Cumberland River with 300 soldiers on two eightdraught transports, accompanied by a gunboat. Their destination was Flynn’s Lick, to link up with the 52nd Kentucky Mounted Infantry, which had driven some enemy partisans across the river.16 As Stokes turned back toward Sparta, Captains Blackburn and Shelah Waters joined him with fifty more of his troopers. The colonel’s bluecoats drove about thirty Rebels out of Sparta on February 2 before riding up the Calfkiller River valley toward Cookeville, hoping to link up with McConnell. Discovering that McConnell had gone farther east toward Livingston, Stokes divided his cavalry into three squads to scout south and west and converge back at Alexandria. While scouting, the colonel claimed that his Tennesseans killed seventeen “of the worst men in the country,” men guilty of “murder, robbery, and rape,” and captured twelve more. McConnell’s force killed twenty-three and captured forty, including Col. Thomas B. Murray.17 On February 13 Capt. George Carter, Ferguson, and about eighty men rode to the home of Isham Richards in Fentress County. They shot Jackson Garner, on leave from the 11th Tennessee Infantry (USA), and Dallas Beaty, “leaving him dead near the wood yard gate.” The next day Colonel Hughs and Bledsoe united their troops to attack a band of Tories commanded by David Beaty and Capt. Rufus Dowdy. Hughs, a frequent conveyor of hyperbole, reported killing seventeen and capturing two. On February 18 Stokes’s two hundred soldiers scattered thirty Rebels at Sparta and reoccupied the town.18 Stokes had all his companies except those of Galbraith’s battalion, some of which reported a few days later. Most of the regiment’s companies remained without mounts in Nashville, prompting the colonel to plead for more horses as well as more arms. Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith responded that getting 15. Ibid., 257. 16. TICW, 1:331; OR, 32(1):156. 17. OR, 32(1):162–63; PAJ, 6:383n. 18. Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 163–64.

144

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

horses was “out of the question.” Too many had been “recklessly destroyed” by neglect, and more could not be purchased because of price. He suggested that Stokes’s men seize mounts in “White, Van Buren, Jackson, and Overton Counties,” where they reportedly existed. As to arms, Smith promised to help get “a depot of cavalry arms” established at Nashville.19 Stokes estimated that he faced a combined force of about six hundred men led by Colonel Hughs armed with “the best of [U.S.] arms” captured in Kentucky and “mounted on the fastest horses in the country.” He felt that Hughs was “a brave, vigilant, and energetic officer” but, along with others, held a low opinion of the colonel’s allies such as George W. Carter, Ferguson, and Oliver P. Hamilton. These irregular leaders concentrated with Hughs only when it served their purpose. Hamilton, a Jackson County farmer whose company was initially recruited for “the local defense of the border counties,” was, like Ferguson, accused of killing unionists away from the field of battle. Captain Carter of Van Buren County, “the champion fist and skull fighter of his day in that region,” served initially as a captain in the 8th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA).20 At Sparta Stokes barricaded the streets, fortified his artillery, and bunked his troops in the “deserted houses.” Scouting the surrounding countryside, his men found forage scarce, the rocky “terrain . . . difficult for cavalry,” and the land “infested” with Rebels. They realized that, rather than persecuted unionists, they now occupied the enemy’s attention and faced dual enemies: soldiers “doing the open fighting” and citizens “carrying news and ambushing.”21 On February 22 Stokes detached 110 soldiers under Capt. Ezekiel W. Bass to “scour the woods” for guerillas along the Calfkiller River. As instructed, they rode north on the old Kentucky road leading to Cookeville and swung back by way of Dry Valley at the headwaters of Calfkiller River. Riding into the valley exhausted, the bluecoats heard a shot and saw two men galloping away down Dug Hill Road. When they pursued into what proved to be a trap, “a deafening volley” from Champ Ferguson and sixty guerrillas knocked men from their mounts.22 As the sound of crackling gunshots and the “clanging of the hoofs of scam19. TICW, 1:331–32, 354; OR, 32(1):55, 416, 33(3):70. 20. PAJ, 6:539n; Isaac T. Reneau to Johnson, Mar. 31, 1862, ibid., 5:257–59; Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 165–67; TICW, 1:42. 21. OR, 32 (1):46; Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 166–67. 22. OR, 32 (1):55; Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 167.

The Cumberlands

145

pering . . . horses” reverberated through the valley, a tall, heavy, red-headed Rebel named John Gatewood, “with a pistol in each hand,” overtook five of the fleeing dismounted bluecoats, who surrendered. Seeing that the partisan was alone, two continued running. Gatewood was about to shoot the other three, fearing that he would lose them, when Capt. George Carter appeared and advised him “not to waste his ammunition as it was hard to get.” Then, as the story goes, while Carter held a gun on the prisoners, Gatewood killed them by bashing their heads with a stone.23 The Calfkiller fight became the subject of a ballad by an anonymous source, part of which goes: Old George Carter said you Better not spend your lead, Pick up a rock and knock ’em in The head.24 Hughs reported that his soldiers killed forty-three Federals, wounded thirteen, and took another four prisoner. One observer said that after the bodies were recovered, witnesses discovered that most of the men had been “shot through the head.” All six officers of Bass’s detachment and forty-five of the men returned to Sparta. At nearby Cumberland Institute schoolteacher Amanda McDowell recorded in her diary: “There was a dreadful fight up the river yesterday. Our folks tell it that they killed 35 or 40 of the enemy and got two men wounded. It sounds unreasonable. . . . I fear [they] killed them after they surrendered.” Stokes now declared official policy what soldiers on both sides had been practicing: “Take no prisoners.”25 On March 11 the colonel dispatched another detachment to scout along the Calfkiller. About ten miles from Sparta, Captains Blackburn and Waters and 80 men chased 150 of the enemy into the mountains. Each side suffered a few casualties. The Federals severely wounded Ferguson, who was not heard of again until mid-July. Following up the next day, Stokes’s troopers reportedly “succeeded in killing 7 Texas Rangers, men of the most daring and desperate character.”26 Shortly after sunrise on March 18, Stokes’s bluecoats attacked Hughs’s force 23. Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 168–69. 24. DeLozier, Putnam County, 43; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” 230 (Feb. 23, 1864). 25. OR, 32 (1):56–57. 26. Ibid., 494–95.

146

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

two miles from Beersheba Springs as it returned from raiding the Union depot at Estill Springs below Tullahoma. Many of the Rebels, some still without their breakfast, fled up the mountains, leaving behind U.S. government–issued “saddles, arms, blankets, and clothing” as well as Hughs’s “portfolio and papers.” To prevent the Rebels from concentrating, Stokes ordered his cavalry to round up stragglers. They found that “Hughs’[s] command [was] scattered over the entire country, no 10 of his men being together.” While scouring Jackson, Overton, and Putnam counties for five days, Stokes’s troopers averaged killing a man a day, among them Major Bledsoe, who was shot while foraging.27 Stokes never felt prouder of his officers and men. They had discharged their duties “unremittingly, faithfully, and cheerfully.” He sensed an increasingly loyalty south of the Cumberland River. “A great number of [Rebel] soldiers,” he reported, “have taken the amnesty oath, and the people manifest a friendly disposition toward the restoration of civil government.” These included some of Hughs’s men, including Fayette McDowell, who swore the amnesty oath on March 29, and respected civilians such as McDowell’s schoolteacher father taking the oath a week earlier. Colonel Hughs admitted that some of his soldiers had “refused to come out at all” from Tennessee, preferring to remain behind and take the oath of allegiance. Even he sent word to Stokes at Sparta “that he was coming in to take the oath and bring his whole command.” But it was all a stratagem to buy time to divide his troops into squads for a break through the enemy’s lines to join the Army of Tennessee, now commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, at Dalton, Georgia.28 Now with Hughs gone, Stokes knew he must leave Sparta due to the lack of horses and forage. “Over one-half of [his] command,” he reported, were “dismounted, having worn out their horses by constant duty.” He once again pled for new mounts and for “Spencer rifles,” believing that with those guns, “no regiment in the rebel service” could defeat his regiment.29 Stokes was never to know what he could do with his 5th Tennessee in the future, for on April 2 the Cavalry Corps was reorganized. He was replaced by Lt. Col. William J. Clift and appointed post commander at Carthage, where he would be dependent on the troops of other units, including those of his old 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid.; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” 233 (Mar. 20, 1864), 234 (Apr. 15, 1864); Siburt, “Colonel John M. Hughs,” 91. 29. OR, 32 (1):57.

The Cumberlands

147

regiment and one-year mounted infantry regiments. Despite all his ensuing difficulties with his new command, months later the colonel still held a high opinion of his former regiment. Writing to Governor Johnson, he claimed: “The loyal people have confidence in the 5th. The rebel citizens stand in awe of them while the guerrillas fear them.” In the fall Stokes campaigned as an elector for the Lincoln-Johnson ticket, and after Johnson became president, he promoted Stokes to brigadier general.30 On April 5 the 5th Tennessee rode north from Sparta bound for Granville on the east side of the Cumberland River. There the regiment stayed out the month. Complying with an order to mount the men, Clift ordered the seizure of about 250 horses from farmers east and north of the Cumberland. The men also captured more Texas Rangers as well as some guerillas, mostly from around Flynn’s Lick, five miles northeast of Granville. Throughout April numerous citizens from the village and the surrounding area took the oath of allegiance to the United States.31 In June the 5th Tennessee was ordered to Tullahoma, the regiment’s headquarters for the remainder of 1864. There they guarded the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and scouted the surrounding area. On more than one occasion, they captured guerrillas in Lincoln County, reportedly sending them to the “ ‘Happy land of Canaan’ to await exchange.” Most of the soldiers performed garrison duty in detachments at stations along the railroad, including McMinnville, Decherd, and Tracy City, while others engaged in “scouting, foraging and escort duty.” During the latter part of the summer, the regiment helped drive cattle over the mountains to Bridgeport, Alabama, from where the animals could be shipped to help feed Sherman’s army in Georgia.32 The Cumberlands region was a special place from mid-1863 to mid-1864, one controlled by neither side and one without a strong base of operations for either, though the Federals had an enduring occupation at Carthage. Several Confederate officers arrived or remained in the area to flesh out their regiments, including Bledsoe, Hughs, and Murray. They soon found themselves allied with guerrillas and bushwhackers who harbored their own private feuds and agendas. When it coincided with their orders or their objectives, the Con30. ORS, 65:498; Stokes to Johnson, Sept. 12, 1864, PAJ, 7:153–54. 31. TICW, 1:332, 354–55, 357; Nashville Times and True Union, Oct. 22, 1864. 32. ORS, 65:498–99, 503; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 42–43.

148

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

federates sought the guerrillas’ assistance. Neither side of irregulars—best represented by the Rebel Ferguson and the Tory Beaty—respected the rules of warfare, and this lack of respect ultimately tainted the regulars. Into this situation rode William Stokes and his 5th Tennessee in February 1864, without support except for a small Federal force along the Cumberland River. Stokes had at least united his own regiment under him once his second in command Galbraith was deposed. After some initial success at Sparta, almost half of a detachment commanded by Captain Bass was slaughtered in an ambush at Calfkiller River by Ferguson’s guerrillas. Thereafter Stokes’s men severely wounded the Rebel leader in another skirmish at Calfkiller River, then defeated a force under Colonel Hughs near Beersheba Springs and saw him leave the Cumberlands to join Johnston’s army in Georgia. That spring many people in the region took a loyalty oath to the Union, and Stokes became post commander at Carthage before the 5th moved south to guard the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. More than anywhere else in Tennessee and the adjacent areas of Kentucky, the Cumberlands possessed the conditions to foster guerrilla warfare. The section’s isolated territory, much of it “rough and inaccessible,” made it suitable terrain for irregular warfare. Moreover its population clung to those traditions that encouraged the growth of guerrilla bands: retribution in kind, family feuds, class conflicts, vigilantism, and backwoods wars against authority. In the Cumberlands Rebel guerrillas could largely avoid the army of occupation but still attract enough Federal raids into the interior to make the population hate the Yankees. Finally guerrillas acquired some degree of legitimacy by fighting alongside regulars recruiting in the area. But guerrilla activity ultimately subsided in the region as many of the Rebel irregulars would leave the section with the regular Confederates; more Federals, such as the 5th Tennessee, would be stationed in the towns; and much of the population would turn on the remaining guerrillas because of their violence and thievery.33 33. Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, xi–xii, 66.

CHAPTER 9

Mounted Infantry

C

ongressman Andrew J. Clements of Macon County urged Governor Johnson in November 1862 to have twelve-month soldiers recruited in the Cumberland River valley. Having taken refuge in Kentucky in 1861, the physician, who knew the situation on both sides of the river, proposed establishing a camp “near Carthage or Gainesboro.” Because the border area had already “furnished a large number of volunteers,” few additional residents would enlist for three-years’ service. But if unionists could “go into camp [nearby] to protect their homes” while committing themselves for only one year, enough men could be recruited to guard the section “from the Cumberland river to the mountains.” Governor Johnson also began to hear from others about shorter enlistment terms for home guards. Regardless, if the new soldiers were to pursue guerrillas, they would need to be mounted.1 Not everyone favored the idea. Opponents included Richard M. Edwards, who still hoped to reassume command of the 4th Tennessee. Writing in September from Chattanooga while recruiting, Edwards argued that this policy of having one-year recruits would discourage three-year enlistment and prevent filling regular regiments. One-year units would be weak and undisciplined, their behavior would provoke enemy retaliation, and their weapons would fall into the hands of Rebels. The former legislator believed that one-year unattached units would operate similarly to companies “mainly of deserters from Bragg’s army” in the 1st Alabama and Tennessee Vedette Cavalry (USA), such as Capt. Calvin Brixley’s command, “robbing stealing and plundering both parties alike and . . . burning houses and committing outrages.”2 1. Clements to Johnson, Nov. 3, 1862, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC. 2. Edwards to Johnson, Sept. 30, 1863, PAJ, 6:389–91; ibid., 5:287n; BDTGA, 2:163.

150

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

Despite such opposition, in September 1863 Governor Johnson authorized the raising of one-year mounted Union-guard regiments to receive “the same pay, rations, clothing, & c.” as other Union soldiers. He called upon these units to suppress “the rebellion, and all freebooting and marauding combinations.” In a telegraph message to Secretary Stanton in early October, he spelled out the urgency of arming these men to serve “in Genl. Rosecrans’s rear in putting down guerrillas, guarding the Railroads & in co-operating with the various military posts.” During fall 1863 some guard regiments began to be designated as mounted infantry. Johnson eventually created eight of them, four in Middle Tennessee and four in East Tennessee. The Union guards operated mostly in three areas: along the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, from the upper Cumberland toward Sparta, and west of Nashville toward the Tennessee River.3 But before the Union army mustered in any of these mounted infantry as regiments, opposition came in early 1864 from the new crusading chief of the Cavalry Bureau in Washington, Brig. Gen. James Harrison Wilson. His bureau controlled the issuing of horses, equine equipment, and arms for mounted troops. Wilson opposed mounting additional regiments until others already mustered had adequate strength in men, horses, weapons, and availability of forage. Unfortunately for Wilson, Congress had already authorized twenty thousand mounted infantry to serve in Kentucky. He only temporarily prevented supplies and horses from going to companies forming for Tennessee. But after he left the bureau in April 1864 to serve under Grant in Virginia, Johnson got his way—horses, equipment, and arms for his one-year regiments as well as their muster into the U.S. Army. Many of the horses, however, had to be impressed from the countryside.4 In September 1863 Johnson authorized Abraham E. Garrett, a thirty-threeyear-old Livingston lawyer, to recruit a battalion of one-year mounted infantry. Garrett had already served in a Kentucky regiment with which he gained “knowledge of the country, and . . . experience in guerrilla warfare.” General Gillem instructed him to protect the people west of the Cumberland Mountains and south of the Cumberland River as well as in Macon County, Clement’s home county north of the river. Recruits from throughout the area and even Kentucky formed their companies at Carthage during early 1864. Each 3. Nashville Union, Sept. 26, 1863; OR, 30(4):150; TICW, 1:354–60. 4. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 1:332–33; Edward G. Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman: The Life and Wars of General James H. Wilson (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1972), 101–2.

Mounted Infantry

151

time enlistees filled a company, Garrett sent it north to Kentucky to travel by train to Nashville, where the men were armed, mounted, and mustered before reporting back to Carthage.5 Gillem spelled out what he wanted from Garrett: all his men stationed in one camp with all their officers, “proper vigilance exercised to prevent surprise attacks,” and troops drilled at least three hours a day. To discourage drunkenness Garrett should “close all grog Shops in the vicinity of [the] Camp.” He was “to exercise strick discipline” over detachments sent out and to punish any lawlessness by his men. To prevent foraging, all food and supplies would be drawn from the quartermaster and commissary at Carthage.6 By December 1863 Garrett had 200 recruits in two companies; by January 1864, 250 in four companies; and by March, 587 in six companies. Some of Garrett’s officers—such as Rufus Dowdy of Beaty’s guerrillas and Andrew J. “Jack” Garrison of Stokes’s 5th Tennessee—had experience fighting the enemy. But many were mere boys coming of age on the battlefield. Others had deserted the Rebel army because the war had proven a disillusioning disappointment, many of whom had originally opposed secession and conscription. Some politicians with an eye to the future, such as Clements, the regimental surgeon, thought these “pentitent rebels” now endangering their lives for the Union should receive “the same treatment and benefits as others serving.”7 That first December thirty-six-year-old Jackson County farmer Francis M. Anderson and his unit, designated Company C of Garrett’s unit, reported to Brig. Gen. Eleazer A. Paine of Gallatin for scouting and for “dispersing bands of Guerrillas.” Garrett and a squad also accompanied a reconnaissance of Illinois infantry sharpshooters on two gunboats up the Cumberland. In January 1864 Garrett and a detachment sailed up the river to Livingston to the adjoining marauder-infested region. In May Garrett’s 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry replaced Stokes’s 5th Tennessee at Granville on the south side of the river upstream from Carthage. There during the summer Garrett’s men completed a fort, picketed, guarded, and scouted. By August General Gillem, while en route to East Tennessee, found the regiment “scouting out as far as [Sparta] thirty six miles from their ‘base’ on foot.” He reported that its men were “pass5. Andrew J. Cropley to Johnson, Jan. 6, 1864, PAJ, 6:538–39; BDTGA, 2:327; Gillem to Garrett, Sept. 9, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Special Order No. 31, Sept. 9, 1863, ibid. 6. Special Order No. 31, Sept. 9, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA. 7. TICW, 1:354–55; BDTGA, 2:163; Webb, DeKalb County, 38–39; Hamer, Tennessee, 2:592–93; Garrett to Johnson, Jan. 8, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA.

152

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

ing through the Country in small parties killing (they take none) all the robbers & Scoundrels.” He was “convinced of their usefulness.”8 To some, such as Pvt. Joseph Bozarth, an October 1863 enlistee, it seemed that the men were “in a continuel giriler fit all of the time in the Cumberland mountain contry.” The casualty figures for the regiment reflect this: almost all the men lost were killed, for the guerrillas took no prisoners and murdered the wounded (as did the Union guards). Moving in squads during 1864, the regiment lost from one to three men from seven different companies in eleven different bushwhacker and guerrilla attacks upon them in six counties. That fall most of Garrett’s men scouted out of Carthage through Jackson, Overton, Putnam, and White counties while a few guarded Gallatin. Early the next year he scattered his companies along the river between Butler’s Landing and Livingston and on the railroad near Murfreesboro. During its service the regiment averaged only about four desertions per company, several due to family illnesses.9 With his term expiring late in 1864, Capt. William J. Cleveland of Company A, 1st Mounted received a commission to recruit a new regiment, the 8th Tennessee Mounted Infantry. Earlier in 1863 Cleveland was exonerated of murdering a Rebel recruiter. But afterward he was kidnapped from his home—which was also looted of $300, a horse and saddle, and his and his wife’s clothing—by David L. Bond’s “band of plunderers” from Wilson County. Later, “[s]eeing death staring [him] in the face [Cleveland] sprang into a grove of Cedars & by the aid of Providence made [his] escape.” The captain enrolled four companies at Carthage and a fifth at Clifton in spring 1865, all serving primarily on guard duty. For the most part the men felt “very well taken care of.” When Stokes resigned from the army in March 1865, Cleveland succeeded him as post commander at Carthage.10 In September 1863 Maj. John Murphy of the 5th Tennessee began raising the 2nd Tennessee Mounted Infantry. He enrolled his first two companies 8. Hale, DeKalb County, 236–38; Alvan Gillem to Johnson, Aug. 9, 1864, PAJ, 7:86–87; Francis M. Anderson, 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry, CSR; Andrew J. Cropley to Johnson, Jan. 6, 1864, PAJ, 6:538–39. 9. TCWVQ, 1:19; RAGT, 190–203; Garrett to Johnson, Aug. 10, 1864, Johnson Papers, TSLA; TICW, 1:354–55; ORS, 65:672–75; 1st Mounted Tennessee Infantry, CSR. 10. TICW, 1:360–61; ORS, 65:789; TCWVQ, 1:60, 79–80; RAGT, 416; Cleveland to Brownlow, July 27, 1865, William G. Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry, CSR; Ben Nicklin to Johnson, Oct. 2, 1864, Johnson Papers, TSLA; Cleveland to Johnson, Oct. 26, 1864, ibid.

Mounted Infantry

153

mostly from Wayne County, bordering the Tennessee River in Middle Tennessee, by establishing a recruiting office at Waynesboro. One local man, though only a boy during the war, claimed that many enlistees “first joined the Confederate army, and when its cause began to wane, deserted and joined the Federals.” In November Murphy dispatched Lt. Milton W. Hardy of Carroll County, paroled as one of Hawkins’s men at Trenton in 1862, to raise a battalion of cavalry west of the Tennessee River. Recruiting from Decatur County north to Henry County, Hardy had fifty-five volunteers at Paducah by Christmas. But in March 1864, as he recruited back through Henry County, guerrillas killed the handsome twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant in a gunfight. Others out recruiting swelled Murphy’s ranks to eight hundred fifty men by that time. Two-thirds of these hailed from Middle Tennessee counties bordering the Tennessee River or enlisted from Alabama. Others, such as Hardy’s recruits, came from counties west of the river.11 Before 1864 Major Murphy established his headquarters at Clifton, a thriving small riverport in the 1850s. By steamer he received supplies and sent new recruits to Nashville “to be equipped and clothed.” Gillem felt good about Murphy’s “success in recruiting and [his] ‘popularity’ as an officer.” He instructed him to patrol along the river “as low as the mouth of Duck river . . . and as high as Savannah,” searching especially for Forrest but also for Maj. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, who at the time was seeking recruits to defend the weakly guarded Alabama iron and coal industry. Gillem cautioned Murphy to allow “none . . . [to] cross the river without [his] knowledge.” In addition to scouting, the regiment collected enemy stragglers and strove to prevent other Rebel officers from recruiting.12 Murphy’s men built small huts with bunk beds near Clifton. Before entering the army, few of them had lived in more than a two-room cabin. Twentyyear-old George W. Shelton, a “Stone and Brick Mason” from Williamson County, was an exception. He had lived in a four-room house owned by his father, who farmed 250 acres with eighteen slaves. One Giles County farmer wrote that the men “lived well” at Clifton. As with most who later commented 11. TICW, 1:355–56; John J. Steagald to Johnson, Mar. 6, 1864, PAJ, 6:639–40; Authority of Milton W. Hardy to Raise a Battalion, Nov. 7, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Hardy to Gillem, Dec. 23, 1863, ibid.; Pitts, Reminiscences, 107. 12. Gillem to Murphy, Dec. 23, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; ORN, 25(1):706; Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer Jr., The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill, 1993), 277–81.

154

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

on their clothing, he mentioned that they “had good clothes.” Food was plentiful, though limited in variety. One soldier enumerated the food (without commas) as being “rice beans bacon crackers coffee sugar,” all of which they likely received by boat. They also foraged for livestock, poultry, and fodder in the surrounding countryside. Out on a scout the men would invite themselves for supper and spend the night at nearby residences. Occasionally while foraging they stole personal items from households.13 Murphy persuaded numerous residents to sign the oath of allegiance to the United States. Many, no doubt as elsewhere in the state, took the oath because it allowed them to survive by trading. Even some of his captains, according to one report, engaged in illegal trade. They owned “cotton near the Tennessee River [near] Florence and Waterloo, Alabama,” and were “taking advantage of their position and power to speculate in cotton.” During March 1864 Murphy’s troopers guarded polls for county elections ordered by Governor Johnson. In some river counties the colonel’s own “enlisted men” were elected to “Sundry offices.” Following the war four of them served in the legislature and others held local office.14 One sixteen-year-old later recalled that he and others “fought guerilas mostly.” During summer 1864 the 2nd Mounted fought several skirmishes with Col. Jacob B. Biffle’s mixed command of regulars and guerrillas. Recruiting in his home vicinity, Biffle attacked Murphy’s bluecoats at Clifton on four occasions in July and August, being repulsed each time. About 250 troopers from four companies fought Biffle’s cavalry at Lobelville and Beardstown in Perry County on September 27, reportedly “defeating him at both places.” But at Beaver Dam in Hickman County the next day, Murphy’s men “got the worst of it.” And on September 29, after receiving reinforcements, Biffle defeated the same detachment, inflicting twenty-five casualties and forcing its retreat to nearby Centerville.15 In late July Murphy and two companies of his regiment reported to Section No. 54 on the newly completed Nashville & Northwestern Railroad. After a few weeks other 2nd Mounted companies were stationed at Section Nos. 32, 13. TCWVQ, 1:2, 3, 15–16, 110–11, 123–25, 137–39; Pitts, Reminiscences, 96, 103–8. 14. ORN, 25(1):768; numerous copies of “Oath of Allegiance” administered by 2nd Tennessee Mounted Infantry officers, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; “Application for the Discharge of Enlisted Men of the 2nd Tenn. Mt. Inft. to Enable Them to Accept Civil Office . . . ,” ibid.; BDTGA, 2:175, 214–15, 708, 861. 15. TCWVQ, 1:123–25, 137–39; ORS, 65:692–700.

Mounted Infantry

155

49, and 55. Along the line hundreds of Tennessee black soldiers, many of them recruited at Clarksville, Gallatin, and Murfreesboro, worked on the railroad alongside black laborers. In addition to guarding the railroad, squads of Murphy’s men scouted almost daily for guerrillas. By spring 1864 almost 2,800 soldiers guarded the Nashville & Northwestern, two black infantry regiments along with mounted and dismounted white Tennesseans. Although cut off during the siege of Nashville in fall 1864, the railroad accomplished its objective of supplying Federal forces. The soldiers guarding it also ended almost all of the movement of partisans and guerrillas from Kentucky to Alabama.16 During late September 1864, the army mustered out Companies A and B, 2nd Mounted at the expiration of their one-year enlistment. In early November the army ordered the regiment to Johnsonville, where its remaining men picketed two fords on the Duck River nearby. On the last day of the month, while Hood threatened Nashville, the 2nd Mounted escorted Brig. Gen. Joseph A. Cooper’s 6th Tennessee Infantry to the capital. The 6th had been guarding crossings on the Duck River at Centerville after Hood crossed the Tennessee in early November. But after the battle at Franklin, they engaged in a forced march toward the capital by way of Charlotte.17 From Nashville General Wilson ordered Murphy’s regiment to Gallatin, where it patrolled the Cumberland River from Carthage to Nashville and guarded the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. On January 21, 1865, after Hood had been driven back across the Tennessee River into Alabama, Murphy’s regiment returned to Clifton. There it remained until mustered out in June 1865.18 Joseph H. Blackburn began raising the 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry in April 1864. Most of his recruits received a bounty of $100, with one-third paid at enlistment. Some men and officers, such as 1st Lts. James Wortham and William L. Hathaway of the 5th Tennessee, transferred to the new regiment because of their association with Blackburn and their desire to command. Other officers once served in Tennessee regiments as enlisted men. Recruits came mostly from Middle Tennessee, except for the nucleus of Capt. John W. Phillips’s Company B of West Tennesseans mustered at Memphis in spring 1864. For the most part recruiters raised the companies of the 4th Mounted 16. ORS, 65:692–700; Richard P. Gildrie, “Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland Valley, 1862–65,” THQ 49 (fall 1990): 170, 173. 17. TICW, 1:356; ORS, 65:692–702; Jacob D. Cox, The March to the Sea, Franklin and Nashville (New York, 1882), 98; Cooper, Survivor of Two Wars, 12; Gildrie, “Guerrilla Warfare,” 169–70. 18. TICW, 1:356.

156

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

in towns formerly connected with officers of the 5th Tennessee—Carthage, Lebanon, Liberty, Alexandria, and Shelbyville—as sort of home guards, acting independently of the regiment as a whole. Blackburn detached a few men from several companies for duty with the sheriff of Smith County.19 During July 1864 Hathaway’s company-in-the-making at Liberty pursued guerrilla Hiram T. “Pomp” Kersey, who with about thirty men operated near Smithville. When only thirteen years old, Kersey, from Liberty near Short Mountain, joined the 16th Tennessee Infantry Regiment (CSA). He later fought at Perryville and Stones River, but when Bragg moved south during the summer of 1863, Pomp deserted and returned home. Perhaps he had wearied of regimentation and discipline, or he wanted to protect his family from unionist bushwhackers. Regardless, that summer he recruited a small band of former soldiers and young would-be horsemen who dreamed of “the daring and reckless exploits of cavalry raiders.” They camped on Short Mountain and made frequent nocturnal raids into nearby towns.20 Early on, Kersey’s guerrillas gained recognition when they galloped into Smithville and killed eight of Captain Blackburn’s recruiters. They robbed citizens of Liberty, taking “valuables” as well as necessities. As long as victims were only unionists, Confederates felt “pillaging the enemy” should not be “regarded as robbery.” But to survive, Kersey’s men—most no more than boys— eventually stole even from Rebels.21 On the night of July 23, 1864, Kersey and about fifteen of his men rode north from Short Mountain as uninvited guests to a dance at the Dennis home south of Liberty. Among the “merry-makers” were some men from Blackburn’s 4th Mounted, including Capt. William Hathaway and Lt. Thomas G. Bratten, currently raising Company F, and a lad named James Clarke clad in a blue uniform, though too young to join. As fiddlers played and dancers rocked the house, everyone momentarily forgot their troubles and dangers. When the soldiers began mounting their horses to leave, they heard gunfire and the “wild shouts” of Kersey’s gang. Believing the house surrounded, they rode off into the night pursued by the guerrillas.22 Hathaway, starting a little later, mounted his horse Blackhawk—once paced 19. Ibid., 1:357; ORS, 65:732–34; 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry CSR. 20. Hale, DeKalb County, 239. 21. Ibid., 239–40. 22. Ibid., 241.

Mounted Infantry

157

at “a mile in 2:30”—and pursued the pursuers. But the Rebels overtook young Clarke. Seeing no escape, the boy dismounted behind a tree and for a few effervescent moments became the soldier he had dreamed of being. He “emptied his pistols at the enemy” before being killed in a hail of bullets. After that Kersey abandoned the chase, and the bluecoats rode safely to Liberty. The captain and the others rested, then twelve of them rode out before daylight in search of Kersey.23 As Hathaway’s squad quietly approached a thicket on Half Acre Mountain east of Short Mountain, they saw horses haltered and Kersey’s men sleeping. Seeking no prisoners, they fired a volley, killing five of the “slumberers.” Another met his death while trying to get away, and others escaped down the mountain. Kersey ran and mounted his horse but could not untie the halter. Lieutenant Bratten held a gun against the guerrilla’s body and pulled the trigger. It snapped but did not fire. Kersey quickly jumped from his horse and ran. But this time Bratten’s gun fired, as did Hathaway’s, both shots hitting Kersey and killing him instantly.24 After locating oxen and an oxcart, Hathaway’s men “piled” the seven bodies “on the cart like rails” and headed toward Liberty. Reaching the town at sundown, they laid the corpses on the floor of John Hays’s vacant store. The next day a detail buried them on Daniel Smith’s farm in sight of the town’s bridge.25 In early August Blackburn received word that George W. Carter and Champ Ferguson had fashioned a force to attack Tracy City. The captain, still in the 5th Tennessee but enlisting the 4th Mounted, formed a detachment of fifteen men at Liberty and moved southeast to Spencer. There he learned that the guerrillas had returned from Tracy City and camped nearby at Hemlock Hollow. He and Sgt. John Vanatta rode ahead of the others. Disguised as civilians they entered Carter’s camp at a farmhouse near a “Swampy thicket” and declared that they wanted to join the company. The Rebels told them to stable their horses before being fed. While “unsaddling,” the rest of the detachment arrived. Carter’s men, fearing they were greatly outnumbered, fled on foot through the “[s]wampy thicket,” leaving in their wake their bounty from Tracy City. Lacking transport, Blackburn’s men burned “five wagon loads of 23. Ibid., 241–42. 24. Ibid., 242. 25. Ibid., 243.

158

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

arms . . . , principally Enfield rifles[,] unserviceable and all loaded[,] which made them dangerous.”26 Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy had praised Capt. James Wortham and the troops he was raising for Blackburn’s 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry battalion for their performance against Wheeler’s raid in September 1864. Fewer than six weeks later, though, he referred to Wortham’s men as “a small irresponsible, independent Command.” Numerous reports had come to him of the troopers’ “loose discipline.” As with Galbraith’s troopers at Shelbyville before them, the general accused them of “marauding and pillageing from the inhabitants.” Their lack of vigilance allowed “a band of 18 Gurrillas” to wreak vengeance against them. The Rebels had “surprised and captured thirty one (31) of them without fireing a shot, and afterwards murdered ten of them in cold blood[.]” Wortham’s command remained at Shelbyville until the enemy swept north to Nashville in December 1864.27 These same Shelbyville-based companies (A, C, and I) accounted for onehalf of the 4th Mounted’s forty deserters. On the whole the companies defended Shelbyville from greatly weakened Rebel irregulars. But they did not always defend the town and at times themselves created a few problems for law enforcement.28 In November 1864 Governor Johnson ordered Blackburn to establish his headquarters at Liberty and report to his former commander, Stokes, “for temporary duty until further orders from the state Adjutant General’s Office.” By 1865, Confederate partisan and guerrilla warfare had diminished in the Cumberlands. In winter 1864, Federals had killed Murray and captured Hamilton, and that spring Colonel Hughs and his recruits reported to General Johnston at Dalton, Georgia. During the second half of the year, Captain Gatewood also took his guerrilla squad to North Georgia. Then when Wheeler rode through Sparta in September, Ferguson and Carter joined General Williams’s brigade only to be cut off from Wheeler and forced to escape through East Tennessee into Virginia. Federals out of Kentucky later killed Carter during a raid on Saltville in October 1864, and Ferguson did not return to the Cumberlands until spring 1865.29 26. ORS, 65:732–34. 27. Robert H. Milroy to Johnson, Oct. 28, 1864, PAJ, 7:257–58; OR, 38(5):842. 28. 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry, CSR; RAGT, 225–40. 29. TICW, 1:357; Special Order No. 178, Nov. 4, 1864, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Siburt, “Colonel John M. Hughs,” 91; Lewis A. Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid (Greenwood, Fla., 1986), 268.

Mounted Infantry

159

On one scout in February 1865, Blackburn and his 4th Mounted accompanied by a detachment from the 5th Tennessee commanded by Capt. James T. Exum moved in “small squads” south of Lebanon scouring for guerrillas, capturing a handful of guerrillas in both Wilson and White counties. At Sparta Blackburn learned that 2nd Lt. James W. Revis of the 13th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) had left recently with forty-six soldiers “attempting to make their escape across the Tennessee river.” He “selected thirty men, well mounted” to pursue Revis while Exum and the others returned to Carthage. After pursuing for three to four days, the young colonel surrounded Revis and his men at a barn near Kingston. The bluecoats killed one and captured the lieutenant and nine others, but “the remainder made their escape by plunging into the Tennessee River, where it is supposed they . . . drowned.” Altogether by the time Blackburn returned to Liberty—after being “out for over twenty days”—he had “succeed[ed] in killing and capturing thirty-seven of the enemy.”30 On March 11, 1865, the army ordered Colonel Blackburn to Alexandria with his 500 men “to restore confidence to the people and destroy the guerrillas now infesting that region.” On April 25 Blackburn detached four companies to Lafayette (in Macon County near Kentucky) to help civil authorities capture or kill guerrillas. One month later his regiment made an eastward, semicircular movement through White, Overton, Fentress, and Morgan counties, joining Parsons’s 9th Tennessee Cavalry, which rode west. They hoped for a final destruction of Rebel bands in those counties. The 9th Tennessee, about 350 men strong, had recently been engaged from the Holston River to the Cumberland Mountains in capturing a band of outlaws.31 One East Tennessee mounted infantry regiment, the 3rd (a special case of three-month recruits) raised in 1863 by Robert A. Crawford—Burnside’s “secret police chief”—saw scant action. But apparently some of the regiment’s men might have extended their term of enlistment. Creed F. Boyer of the 3rd claimed to have fought in fall 1864 at Bulls Gap and at Greeneville when John Hunt Morgan was killed by members of the 13th Tennessee. As later reported by their veterans, the 3rd Mounted and the 13th Tennessee were “well fed & well clothed.” Boyer claimed to have had “plenty of crackers, coffee and sow belly.”32 Col. Spencer B. Boyd and his second in command, Stephen Beard, a well30. Joseph H. Blackburn to Johnson, Aug. 5, 1864, PAJ, 7:76–77. 31. Blackburn to Johnson, Jan. 28, 1865, ibid., 441–42. 32. TICW, 1:356–57, 358–59; Crawford to Johnson, Aug. 22, 1863; PAJ, 6:333; TCWVQ, 1:17–18, 86.

160

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

to-do Bradley County farmer imprisoned by Confederates in fall 1861, organized the 5th Tennessee Mounted Infantry in fall 1864. Its men remained at Cleveland, a Union army post, for months helping defend the town from raids by outlaws and deserters. They also received enlistees from along the rail line to Knoxville and refugee recruits from North Georgia. An influx of Georgia refugees into Tennessee during 1864 to join Union units—such as the 5th Tennessee Mounted Infantry—derived largely from the same factors that had propelled refugees from northern Alabama and western North Carolina to enlist in other Federal commands. These nonslaveholding mountaineers increasingly resented conscription, impressments of property, and other encroachments on their lives by the Confederacy. Many had deserted from the Confederate army and now sought to survive on what they believed to be the winning side. Through service in the Union army, they felt they could better protect their homes and find food, clothing, and shelter as well as enlistment bounties and a salary to support themselves and their families. Such men frequently enlisted in the army with other members of their family. In addition, many longed to avenge themselves against their enemies.33 In September 1864 Colonel Boyd sent William Lillard of Polk County, Tennessee, and William A. Twiggs of adjoining Fannin County, Georgia, at their own urging into the latter county to recruit. Operating separately, each of the Rebel deserters sought to raise his own company. But Lillard, perhaps by force of circumstance, concentrated on piloting small groups of recruits and members of their families back to Cleveland. Twiggs looked beyond recruiting to, among other things, protecting his own and expelling Confederates. He found allies already organizing discontents in the county, Soloman Stansbury and Iley Stuart, deserters from both armies in turn who really wanted to stay at home. The trio sought to create their own little dominion by uniting antiConfederates, raising a mounted company, impressing horses, and controlling all of Fannin. Unfortunately some of their recruits, along with other antiConfederates, sought revenge against old personal enemies. Gov. Joseph E. Brown, himself a native of adjacent Union County, in October dispatched Col. James J. Findley and a militia unit from Lumpkin County to restore Confederate control. Findley captured a group of the company, including Stansbury and Stuart, at Dial and transported them forty miles to Dahlonega. There he 33. TICW, 1:358; PAJ, 5:572n; Sarris, “Anatomy of an Atrocity,” 681–96; William Harris Bragg, Joe Brown’s Army: The Georgia State Line, 1862–1865 (Macon, 1987), 115; Hurlburt, Bradley County, 113–14; Jonathan Dean Sarris, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South (Charlottesville, Va., 2006), 107–12.

Mounted Infantry

161

ordered the execution by a firing squad of Stansbury and Stuart along with a man named William Witt. By then Twiggs rested safely in Cleveland and by February 1865 had enough recruits to have them mustered as Company H, 5th Tennessee Mounted.34 During 1864, guerrillas established bases in North Georgia and western North Carolina from which they could raid the southern part of East Tennessee. They would ride into the state after dark and either strike that night or camp during the day and strike the next night. After capturing and killing unionists, plundering their victims’ homes, and seizing supplies and horses, they would return to their isolated base. In November 1864, for example, Capt. John P. Gatewood, who earlier rode with Ferguson, struck Polk and Bradley counties with a “well mounted and well armed” band of about fifty riders. Some of these were mere “boys from twelve to sixteen” years old. While plundering homes, rustling a herd of cattle, and stealing about forty horses and mules, “the Red-headed Beast from Georgia” and his men murdered more than twenty anti-Confederates, including several Georgians en route to enlist in the 5th Mounted at Cleveland. Gatewood’s raids out of Georgia were among the reasons that Boyd’s regiment, except for one or two detachments, was stationed at Gordon’s Mills, Georgia, during March and April 1865 (returning to Chattanooga after Appomattox and remaining throughout May and June).35 George A. Gowin—a Chattanooga schoolteacher transitioning to the practice of medicine—began recruiting the 6th Tennessee Mounted Infantry in August 1864. By October he commanded a regiment of seven companies and 450 men. During the next few months, Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman at Chattanooga deployed detachments of the regiment to scout for guerrilla bands in the southern counties of the Cumberlands and into North Georgia. During November and December, Gowin detailed a battalion to help enroll militia in the mountain counties of Marion (where militiamen numbered almost 700 by January 1865), Sequatchie, Bledsoe, and Cumberland. The battalion “guard[ed] against guerrillas in [the] Sequatchie Valley” in January 1865, while other companies scouted into Georgia and in mid-February “guard[ed] polls of election in Rhea and Bledsoe Counties, Tennessee.”36 The 5th and 6th Mounted, both assigned to Steedman’s District of the Eto34. Sarris, A Separate Civil War,126–33. 35. Sarris, “Anatomy of an Atrocity,” 679–84; Fisher, War at Every Door, 83; Hurlburt, Bradley County, app., 6–13. 36. TICW, 1:359; PAJ, 5:75n; ORS, 65:772–76; Edward S. Richards to Johnson, Jan. 10, 1865, PAJ, 7:385–91.

162

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

wah, served together on a number of occasions. The regiments kept small detachments at Cleveland for recruiting and scouting. In January 1865 Steedman sent a detachment of Gowin’s 6th Mounted toward Summerville, Georgia, by way of Lafayette. At McLemore’s Cove near Ringgold on February 1, Gowin’s troops, along with those of Boyd’s 5th Mounted, attacked Gatewood’s camp. They killed fourteen guerrillas and captured the horses and arms of the others, fleeing for their lives. After this the 6th continued to scout north of Atlanta. Maj. William H. Bean and a detachment of eighty soldiers, again accompanying Boyd’s regiment, participated in an expedition to Dalton and east to Spring Place and the Coosawattie River, scouting for guerrillas from April 1 through 4. During this time they skirmished with guerrillas at several locations. For a while after the war ended, the Tennesseans were stationed at Resaca as couriers along the railroad to Atlanta.37 James T. Shelley of Roane County, the former colonel of the 5th Tennessee Infantry, and merchant John McGaughy of McMinn County began raising the 7th Tennessee Mounted Infantry during summer 1864. When Shelley returned to his old post as county-court clerk that fall, McGaughy assumed command of the regiment. Asked publicly in spring 1861 by his friend Sen. John Bell (who had gone over to the secessionists) how he felt about the “new questions” (of Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call up of troops), McGaughey had responded: “I am still for the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws.”38 During fall 1864 the major had his regiment of about five hundred men guarding the garrison in Athens, Tennessee, and mountain passes east of the town. As one of several officers holding the position of county provost, McGaughy served as provost marshal for McMinn County. He expelled a number of local families from Athens and jailed a few women for aiding nearby guerrillas.39 To avenge these acts, as well as those of Provost Joseph Devine of Monroe County, a combined force of six hundred guerrillas and regulars from Vaughn’s and Wheeler’s commands, led by Col. John R. Hart of Georgia, rode into the two counties on January 28, 1865. McGaughy’s outnumbered detachments in the outlying area fled into the surrounding forest, allowing three hundred Rebels to gallop unopposed into Athens’s public square. The garrison fended off the attack for three hours before the enemy withdrew with twenty-five or 37. TICW, 1:358–59. 38. Ibid., 359–60; Byrum, McMinn County, 26. 39. Byrum, McMinn County, 39; PAJ, 5:85n; Fisher, War at Every Door, 80.

Mounted Infantry

163

thirty prisoners, including McGaughy, whom they executed. In a raid on Monroe’s county seat of Madisonville, the other three hundred graybacks captured Devine and executed him the following day.40 On appeal from an officer of the 7th Mounted, an expedition came from Knoxville to reinforce the garrison at Athens temporarily. At the beginning of the spring, while Brig. Gen. George Stoneman raided North Carolina and Virginia out of East Tennessee, Lt. Col. James I. Dial, as ordered, took all of his 7th Mounted troops from Athens to accompany Stoneman except for “unarmed men” to guard the mountain passes east of town. There they remained until July 1865.41 During 1864 and 1865 the one-year troopers of the eight Union mounted infantry regiments in the state served with mixed results. Earlier arguments by Andrew Clements favoring them and by Richard Edwards opposing them both proved true. Especially in the Cumberlands, as Clements wrote, many recruits joined who would not have committed for three years, thereby protecting unionists, suppressing guerrillas, and generally ranging over a limited but broad territory opposing the Confederacy. Yet Edwards’s opposition was well founded: a substantial number of the rank and file were Rebel deserters who on occasion bullied their enemies and plundered from them, thereby inviting revenge on themselves from bands of enemy regulars and irregulars. In Middle Tennessee the regimental commanders—Garrett, Blackburn, and Murphy—and some of their captains proved to be knowledgeable, experienced, brave, resourceful, and occasionally bold. In East Tennessee the commanders and their captains were less capable, less experienced, and less likely to take the fight to the enemy, though late in the war under orders they did pursue guerrillas in North Georgia. Whatever drawbacks the one-year mounted men exhibited, they contributed more than it might seem, partially because the formation of these regiments coincided with the complete exhaustion of the Confederacy. Since these organizations accepted penitent rebels, they deprived the already depleted enemy forces of manpower while recruiting and conscripting behind Rebel lines. The mounted-infantry tactics of continuously spreading out into small squads and tracking down and killing bands of guerrillas used in the Cumber40. Byrum, McMinn County, 26; Fisher, War at Every Door, 80. 41. Unknown to Johnson, Jan. 30, 1865, PAJ, 7:447–48.

164

Middle Tennessee and Beyond

lands greatly reduced the threat of irregulars, most of whom left the area with gray regulars during Wheeler’s raid in September 1864. The taking of loyalty oaths by civilians in areas where the mounted infantry operated also helped the loyal companies, as was shown by the lack of welcome given to some of Wheeler’s men when they visited their homes. Finally more and more individuals wanted a return to law and order to protect life and property even if it meant Union victory in the war.42 As much as anything, the mopping-up operations performed by the mounted infantry, as well as their holding actions despite some embarrassing defeats along the way, proves that Confederate guerrillas within Tennessee had been contained and were well on their way to annihilation. The mounted infantry of course served only a localized role in these actions, which scholar Robert R. Mackey “delineat[es] between operations aimed at destroying the irregulars themselves and those that aimed at separating the irregulars from the populace.” The former refers to combat with little concern for its damage to noncombatants. The latter refers to “passive measures” such as establishing and strengthening defensive works in the region and Union efforts to win over noncombatants with carrot-and-stick policies. In practice all of these actions could be and often did operate “simultaneously in a relatively small geographic area.” 43 42. Daniel E. Sutherland, “Guerrilla Warfare, Democracy, and the Fate of the Confederacy,” JSH 68 (May 2002): 389–92. 43. Mackey, Uncivil War, 13–14.

Regimental officers of the 1st Tennessee Union Cavalry: 1. Col. James P. Brownlow, 2. Lt. Col. Calvin M. Dyer, 3. Maj. Russell Thornburgh, 4. Maj. H. C. Flagg, 5. Maj. Burton Smith, 6. Surgeon W. F. Green, 7. Surgeon John L. Reed, 8. Chaplain John P. Holtsinger, 9. Adj. John M. Harris, 10. Quartermaster E. D. Fillmore, 11. Surgeon W. T. Rankin. Based upon the Fillmore’s enrollment date (July 26, 1864), the journey of the regiment to Nashville from the Atlanta front in mid-August 1864, a return to action on September 1, and the severe wound to Brownlow on September 2 (ending his service with the regiment), this image was probably made in late August 1864. From W. R. Carter, History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry . . . (Knoxville, 1902), frontispiece

Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, Tennessee state adjutant general (1863–64) and cavalry division commander (1864–65). From Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel, History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1903).

Col. William B. Stokes, commander of the 5th Tennessee Union Cavalry (1862–64) and commander of the post at Carthage, Tennessee (1864–65). From John Fitch, Annals of the Army of the Cumberland (Philadelphia, 1863).

Col. James P. Brownlow, commander of the 1st Tennessee Union Cavalry (1863–64). Courtesy of the McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library, Knoxville, Tenn.

Capt. Daniel Ellis, Union guide and scout (1861–63) and recruiter for the 13th Tennessee Union Cavalry (1863–65). From Daniel Ellis, Thrilling Adventures of David Ellis, the Great Union Guide of East Tennessee for a Period of Nearly Four Years, Written by Himself (New York, 1867).

Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan fought Tennessee Union cavalry on a number of occasions in the Cumberlands of Middle Tennessee and in upper East Tennessee. From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

Lt. Gen. Joseph Wheeler engaged Tennessee Union cavalry throughout Middle Tennessee and in Georgia. From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest skirmished with Tennessee Union cavalry throughout West Tennessee and in the western half of Middle Tennessee. From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

PART 3

West Tennessee and Beyond

”I have always regarded General Gillem’s command as a refuge hospital for indolent Tennesseans. I . . . have never reckoned them anything but a political element.” Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman

Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 10

West Tennessee during 1863

I

n 1863 no battles worthy of the name happened in West Tennessee or northernmost Mississippi, but thirty-six skirmishes occurred in those sections. From the perspective of the Federals, these resulted from three objectives: protection of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad running almost between the two sections, suppression of Rebel recruiters, and pursuit of guerrillas. About a third of skirmishes related to guarding the Memphis & Charleston, which General Grant had ordered “[k]ept open as far as Corinth in spite of all opposition.” Another third took the fight to the enemy below that railroad into northern Mississippi. The remainder mostly concerned opposing guerrillas and recruiters east of Fort Pillow to Brownsville and in the Jackson area. Because the Confederates avoided the Federals, fewer than a third of the skirmishes related to the more than thirty Union expeditions and scouts. Three-fourths of marches departed from stations along the Memphis & Charleston, and the other fourth left from the Jackson area or from Fort Pillow and most likely involved some foraging. Almost half moved into Mississippi to discover any Rebels concentrating near West Tennessee.1 Hurst’s 6th Tennessee remained at Bolivar during January and February 1863 before being stationed at Jackson during March and April. From these posts along the Mississippi & Tennessee Central Railroad, the troopers scouted in small detachments, looking for enemy incursions, recruiters, and guerrillas. For the remainder of the year they guarded three posts on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad: LaGrange from May to August, Grand Junction during September and October, and Saulsbury through December. On occasion the 1. Long, Civil War Day by Day, 306–450; OR, ser. 2, 17(2):525.

168

West Tennessee and Beyond

regiment divided into battalions, such as in November, when Companies C, E, and F remained at Grand Junction while A, B, D, and G stood guard at Middleburg (between Bolivar and Grand Junction) and I, K, L, and M were posted at Saulsbury.2 Wilson’s 7th Tennessee Infantry, which never raised more than its initial five companies, was posted in early 1863 at Crockett Station on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, then at Jackson, and finally at LaGrange, where in July it became Companies I, K, L, and M of Hurst’s 6th Tennessee. By then other individuals, including some from North Alabama and westernmost Kentucky, had joined the 6th Cavalry. Several enlisted from Limestone County, Alabama, while Alexander Perryman from Lauderdale County, Alabama, left home astride his horse with his father’s blessing and thirty dollars in his pocket to enlist in the regiment.3 The remnants of Hawkins’s 7th Tennessee, probably fewer than one hundred men, reported to Jackson in January 1863 under the command of Capt. James M. Martin of Company B. Some served as guides for an expedition out of Lexington to Clifton across the Tennessee River that on February 17 captured Col. John F. Newsom of Jackson and sixty-seven of his assorted command, largely engaged in recruiting. From April 29 to May 5, eighty members of the 7th rode on a scout with brigade commander Col. Edward Hatch, an Iowa lumberman. By then men from eight companies of the regiment had gathered at Jackson under the command of Capt. Asa N. Hays, former leader of the Brown Creekers. Two hundred troopers of the 7th collected by June at Grand Junction under Hawkins’s command. From July through October, the regiment served at Saulsbury and thereafter at Union City into 1864.4 During 1863 the Confederate cavalry of Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers occupied the south banks of the Tallahatchie River in northern Mississippi, guarding fords from New Albany down to Panola, a line running thirty to sixty miles from the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Chalmers’ command—altogether from two to three thousand men—included his own, Col. Robert McCulloch’s, and Col. Robert V. Richardson’s brigades; Richardson was often away recruiting behind enemy lines in West Tennessee. Chalmers occupied his time by repelling cavalry raids and preventing them, in the words of one Johnny Reb, 2. ORS, 65:527–30. 3. Storey, Loyalty and Loss, 97; 6th Tennessee, CSR. 4. TICW, 1:337–38.

West Tennessee during 1863

169

“from devastating the Country or penetrating the interior and interfering with the supplies and communication of [his] Army.”5 A Memphis attorney and onetime newspaper editor, Richardson raised his own 1st Tennessee Partisan Rangers—later known as the 12th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA)—from behind Union lines between the Wolf and Hatchie rivers, an area where he also discouraged trade with the enemy and wartime voting. Initially he merged his recruits with those of Cumberland Presbyterian minister Reuben Burrow of Raleigh, a sometime schoolteacher who prior to joining Richardson preached with his revolver laying on the pulpit. Their recruits and would-be enlistees could not always avoid the patrols of Capt. Franklin Moore’s Illinois cavalry out of Fort Pillow. In January 1863 Moore captured two hundred of Richardson’s recruits at Durhamville, Tennessee, below Ripley. In June the captain’s men rode about fifty miles a week to corral some three hundred Rebel enlistees.6 What unionist J. W. Killgore of Henry County believed about his vicinity may well have been true of much of West Tennessee during the first half of 1863. After “the rebel forces evacuated . . . and [we were] left . . . in possession of the Union troops,” he wrote, “our country was in a comparatively quiet and prosperous condition until August, 1863, when guerrilla bands commenced forming by some wretched deserters and emissaries from the rebel army.” By then Grant had achieved the surrender of Vicksburg, and the bulk of Union troops protecting his rear areas in West Tennessee soon began to shift to relieve Rosecrans, under siege in Chattanooga. Only a quarter as many Union scouts soon rode into the interior of West Tennessee and into northern Mississippi than as earlier in the year. “Since the evacuation,” wrote G. Jameson of Union City, “we get a Scouting party about once a month but they only drive the Gurrillas to the Bush until they are gon when they come out again as thick as ever.”7 Although there were “still enough Yankees close by . . . to make Confeder5. Alderson, “Reminiscences of John Johnston,” THQ 14 (Sept. 1955): 145. 6. PAJ, 6:300n; OR, 33(2):65; Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies: Tennessee (New York, 1992), 61; TICW, 1:422, 423, 426, 435; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 54, 58, 59, 60, 63; Loula G. Mallory, “The Three Lives of Raleigh,” WTHSP 13 (1959): 83. 7. Paul R. Coppock, “The Killgore Killing,” WTHSP 15 (1961): 42; John Johnston, “Forrest’s March out of West Tennessee, December 1863: Recollections of a Private,” WTHSP 12 (1958): 138; Jameson to Johnson, Sept. 14, 1863, PAJ, 6:367.

170

West Tennessee and Beyond

ates watchful and to keep well under cover,” wrote Confederate private John Johnston, some “quietly slipped” into West Tennessee. These included “a good many commissioned officers . . . engaged in the effort to organize companies and regiments of Cavalry.” After Stones River the Conscription Bureau in Richmond allowed the Army of Tennessee to engage in the impressment of conscripts. For this work Bragg provided General Pillow with cavalry companies and company officers from each regiment. A Columbia, Tennessee, attorney and planter, Pillow appealed by proclamation and hundreds of letters for support from the inhabitants and sent squads with officers to their company’s counties of origin seeking enlistees, enforcing conscription, and seizing stragglers and deserters. Beyond this he established rendezvous for inductees and threatened local peace officers with conscription if they failed to cooperate.8 The War Department curtailed Pillow’s successful, albeit abusive, operation in March 1863. But in July, following Bragg’s withdrawal behind the Tennessee River, the fall of Vicksburg, and the low number of conscripts reporting during the spring, the department allowed the general to revive his impressments. Pillow initially concentrated on deserters and Tories in North Alabama and then on stragglers and parolees in Mississippi. But regarding West Tennessee he worked closely with Governor Harris and General Forrest and he sent his chief assistant, Col. Alexander W. Campbell, into the section with documents describing their plans, which Federals captured along with the colonel. Despite this setback Pillow sent entire battalions or regiments into West Tennessee to round up deserters, conscripts, and volunteers. By December, however, the War Department had heard enough complaints, and the number of inductees had become so small that authorities reassigned the disappointed Pillow. But the recruiting effort in the region soon accelerated after General Forrest took personal command of it in November 1863.9 From Bolivar and Jackson, Hurst’s 6th scouted mostly in small detachments looking for recruiting squads and guerrillas. In January 1864, while on a scout toward Ripley, one of his scouting parties captured Lt. Col. F. M. Stewart of the 22nd Tennessee Infantry (CSA) along with his adjutant as they were riding on a recruiting tour seeking to fill out their regiment. In March at Pocahontas on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, Hurst and a hundred of his 8. Johnston, “Forrest’s March,” 139; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 250–52; Hughes and Stonesifer, Gideon J. Pillow, 260–65. 9. Hughes and Stonesifer, Gideon J. Pillow, 265–73, 396n; PAJ, 6:263n; Albert B. Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (New York, 1924), 208–15.

West Tennessee during 1863

171

men reportedly killed an enemy colonel and captured thirteen guerrillas and fifteen regulars, shipping the former to a Memphis prison—where they were subjected to “continued imprisonment, hard labor or even execution”—and the latter to Bethel Springs to be processed to prisoner-of-war camps.10 Most guerrillas in West Tennessee during 1863–64 were involved primarily in horse and mule thievery and other forms of stealing from the people of the countryside and secondarily in the persecution of unionists. But exceptions to this general pattern existed, such as with bands led by “bold, bad” Jack Bradford of Jackson and Dick Davis of the Memphis vicinity. Bradford began his bushwhacking at age seventeen after Yankees plundered the home of his widowed mother in 1862. Often disguising himself as a “chicken peddler,” he “waylaid and killed couriers [and] pick[ed] off every man who straggled his way.” Others soon joined him until his band numbered about sixty and became a “terror” to Union soldiers in West Tennessee. A small man in his midtwenties, Davis formerly rode with John Hunt Morgan. He operated out of the Wolf River bottoms as a leader of fifteen to twenty highwaymen, a group composed of deserters from both armies. They mostly robbed individuals coming to and going from Memphis. On occasion the Davis band, which “seldom disturbed private homes,” struck isolated army outposts to upgrade their horses and weapons and obtain ammunition. And sometimes they fired on the trains of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad for pure enjoyment.11 On an extended expedition out of Bolivar in April 1863, Col. M. K. Lawler, brigade commander, moved 300 men of the 18th Illinois Mounted Infantry and 186 of Hurst’s regiment down three roads toward the Hatchie River and beyond Covington. While Lawler confronted only enemy bands of fewer than thirty men, he did capture four officers, two regimental surgeons, and twenty-eight soldiers from Richardson’s command, along with 110 horses and mules. An immediate return expedition of the same force farther south toward the Loosahatchie River netted only nine guerrillas and seventy-five horses. “Learning”— probably from his prisoners and what he called “reliable citizens”—“that a great number of . . . men, mostly conscripts” opposed the guerrilla-type foraging taking place and that they “desired to return to their homes,” Lawler of10. TICW, 1:334; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 59. 11. Fredrick M. Culp, “Captain George King’s Home Guard Company, CSA,” WTHSP 15 (1961): 55–78; Coppock, “Killgore Killing,” 40–54; Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indiana Cavalry Volunteers (La Porte, Ind., 1876), 193–205; Memphis Daily Appeal, June 18, 1869.

172

West Tennessee and Beyond

fered paroles to those “styling themselves partisan rangers.” To facilitate their disarming, taking an oath of allegiance to the Union, and returning to “peaceful pursuits,” he left four officers and sixty troopers for three days at Covington before staying for three days at Somerville. The colonel also left another detachment of the same size to remain for three days at Stanton Depot before proceeding to Whiteville. But given the climate of opinion in West Tennessee, it is doubtful that he had many accept his offer.12 In May, at the request of Lt. Cmdr. S. L. Phelps of the USS Champion, Lt. Col. William Breckenridge of the 6th Tennessee agreed to have Phelps cross him and a detachment of fifty-five men to the east side of the Tennessee so they could attack Linden, the county seat of Perry County. The Champion’s skipper had information that Rebels there were “plundering . . . , carrying off Union men, and . . . taking conscripts.” On the night of May 12, the Champion and three other boats picked up Breckinridge and his detachment with their mounts at Decaturville. The vessels crossed over the river, unloaded the cavalry, and then spread themselves along the shore to await Breckinridge’s return. The lieutenant colonel and his men, reputedly “perfectly familiar with the people and country,” galloped the twelve miles to Linden in order to arrive at daybreak. They surrounded the courthouse, serving as headquarters of a detachment of the 27th Tennessee Infantry, and attacked, forcing a Rebel surrender before most of the company, mustered only the previous evening, had time to arrive. Altogether the Federals killed three and captured six officers, “30 regular rebel soldiers, 10 conscripts, [and] 50 horses,” losing only one horse themselves. Breckenridge’s men then summarily burned the courthouse with its arms and supplies before galloping with their prisoners to the boats.13 After most of the Union army units at Jackson departed in early summer 1863—leaving only a few lightly garrisoned towns from Kentucky to Mississippi—Confederates felt freer to collect troops in West Tennessee. That summer Cols. Jacob Biffle and Jesse Forrest and Capt. John F. Newsom spent weeks “recruiting, conscripting, and organizing” in McNairy, Madison, and Henderson counties. Colonel Richardson of the 12th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) recruited farther west with fifty to one hundred cavalrymen, who disrupted the raising of “cotton and other produce for market” in the heavily populated 12. OR, 24(1):498–99. 13. TICW, 1:333–34; ORN, 34(1):668–70; ORS, 65:527–31.

West Tennessee during 1863

173

black counties of Haywood and Fayette, within a day’s driving distance of Memphis. On July 14 Hurst’s 6th and other Union cavalry, under the command of Colonel Hatch, skirmished and defeated poorly armed troops under Newsom, Biffle, and Forrest near Jackson and the Forked Deer River. Later on the fifteenth, Hatch send Hurst pressed south to pick up the trail of Biffle, Forrest, and Newsom and what Hurst estimated to be “1,500 to 1,800 rebels.” But because the enemy “fled . . . in great haste, destroying all the bridges,” while Hurst pursued them for forty miles, he still found himself twelve miles behind. He gave up the chase at Pocahontas on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, having captured only twenty stragglers, eight of whom he paroled and five of whom escaped.14 But before Hurst left Jackson, Union troops looted and burned buildings in the “wealthy and beautiful place” filled with “proud, haughty, aristocratic [and] rebellious” individuals. When the bluecoats discovered thirty barrels of whiskey, Colonel Hatch, their commander, found it difficult to prevent the imbibers from incinerating the town. Residents blamed the despised unionists of the 6th Tennessee, whom they viewed as traitors and lowlifes. Mrs. A. A. Newman, whose millinery shop was looted, accused the homegrown Yankees of “adorning the heads of their horses” with her hats as they galloped away. Hurst denied her accusations. Breckenridge reported that when he himself learned of the break in, he expelled soldiers from the shop and secured the store with a guard. Others blamed the looting on the 3rd Michigan Cavalry. Nonetheless, on an appeal by Newman to Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, commanding at Memphis, the general refused to pay Hurst’s soldiers until Newman received $5,139.25 for damages.15 By October 1863 Hurst’s 6th Tennessee, which should have fielded at least a thousand men in twelve companies with full enrollments, reported only six hundred men as combat ready. Relatively few had died of combat wounds. Many of the deaths, including that of Lieutenant Colonel Breckinridge that month, were due to disease. Most occurred in hospitals at Grand Junction, 14. Isaac R. Hawkins to Johnson, Aug. 9, 1863, PAJ, 6:322–23; James M. Tomeny to Johnson, July 24, 1863, ibid., 299–300; OR, 24(3):526; BDTGA, 2:244–45; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 79; OR, 24(2):682–83, 24(3):526–27. 15. Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 79–80; OR, 24(2):679–80; Williams, Historic Madison, 178; Cherry to Amos Gould, Nov. 1, 1865, Henry Cherry Letters, UTL; Edward Kittoe cited in Catton, Grant Moves South, 293.

174

West Tennessee and Beyond

LaGrange, Germantown, and Memphis. Slightly more men deserted than died. Some desertions were caused by the mild punishment meted offenders of only being docked or demoted. Otherwise, deserters left because of homesickness, anxiety about matters at home, disappointment over army life, or unfulfilled promises regarding bounties and pay. Two factors greatly facilitated desertion: the soldier’s nearness to home and his control of a horse.16 That fall, while the Union army in the West concentrated at Chattanooga, General Dodge held Hurst’s 600-man-strong 6th and Hawkins’s more than 200-man 7th at Grand Junction under Hurst’s overall command. Along with some Illinois regiments, the Tennesseans served as part of Col. Lafayette F. McCrillis’s brigade of Hatch’s division. The area, as one Yankee wrote his wife, was “a very prosperous fruitful country” with rich ground, “nicely rolling [and] furnished with good water.” Compared to the suffering of the Tory families mostly to their north, farms there were better off. This caused resentment among Hurst’s men. According to Colonel Hawkins’s cousin, Alvin Hawkins, the loyal West Tennesseans had been “guarding the Memphis & Charleston Rail Road and protecting the persons, families & property of Rebel sympathizers— while their own homes, their own families and every thing they possessed [had] been exposed to the Ravages of Rebel Guerrillas.” In addition their families faced “marauding bands enforcing the Rebel conscription.”17 On October 3 General Chalmers received orders to take his Confederate brigade at Salem, Mississippi, along with Colonel Richardson’s brigade at nearby New Albany, and strike against the Memphis & Charleston Railroad by demonstrating toward LaGrange before swinging west toward Collierville. But before getting that operation underway, the general learned of the Federals’ intention to disrupt a Confederate election at Holly Springs and of Richardson having to repel the 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry, the 9th Kansas, and the 7th Tennessee at New Albany. On October 6 Chalmers moved with eight hundred men toward Holly Springs. Hearing of his approach, well-fortified Yankees with like numbers awaited him eight miles from the town, including the 8th and 9th Illinois, the 6th Tennessee (with 280 men), and three pieces of artil16. 6th Tennessee, CSR; TICW, 1:334; RAGT, 443–75; Fielding Hurst to Johnson, Mar. 4, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War, 3–20, 127–42. 17. TICW, 1:334, 338; ORS, 65:527–30, 544–48; Cadman to wife, Nov. 23, 1862, George Hovey Cadman Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Hawkins to Johnson, Oct. 1, 1863, PAJ, 6:398–99.

West Tennessee during 1863

175

lery. At midnight the dismounted Rebels struck from the rear and front along Coldwater Creek above Lockard Mills. But the attack proved “premature” because it came before enough grays “could be brought into action,” Chalmers later reported, and this “enabled the [Federals] to escape.”18 Anticipating Chalmers would move east, Colonel McCrillis left LaGrange for McDonald’s Store, ten miles east of Salem, with his brigade—the 3rd and 9th Illinois and the 6th Tennessee—and three pieces of artillery. There he was joined by bluecoats returning from New Albany and three additional guns. But now, in accord with his original plan, Chalmers rode toward Collierville, leaving in his wake a Colonel Slovis with the 1st Regiment of Mississippi Partisans to monitor enemy movements. McCrillis turned toward Salem with the 6th in the advance. Before sunrise a battalion of the 6th led by Lt. R. D. Deford drove Slovis’s partisans to buildings beyond the village. Then, supported by Illinois troopers and a howitzer battery, Hurst’s regiment pushed the enemy to about a mile west of Salem.19 That afternoon when McCrillis learned that Chalmers had returned in force from three directions, he moved to “a long ridge, 600 yards east of Salem.” For more than three hours the Federals repulsed three cavalry charges, sought unsuccessfully to flank the enemy, and engaged in an artillery duel. Having exhausted his artillery shells and his ammunition—for “at least six different calibers”—and failing to receive hoped-for reinforcements, McCrillis withdrew. Chalmers’s pursuit lasted only until nightfall. The Federal losses of eleven men included “Maj. Thomas H. Boswell and Lieut. R. D. Deford, Sixth Tennessee Cavalry . . . , seriously wounded.”20 The next day Chalmers sent four detachments of one hundred men each to destroy parts of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad and nearby telegraph lines. The first two detachments successfully tore up tracks east of Collierville. But those assigned to operate to the west , having to ride farther, did not accomplish their assignment before the four detachments, cloaked in darkness, retired toward Byhalia, Mississippi. On the eleventh Richardson’s brigade attacked Collierville but failed to occupy the town because of the unexpected participation of Federals on a Yankee troop train out of Memphis stopping on 18. James R. Chalmers, “General Chalmers’ Report of Operations of Cavalry Division on Line of Memphis and Charleston R.R., from 5th to 13th October, 1863,” SHSP 8 (Jan. 1880): 222–23. 19. Ibid., 223–25; OR, 30(2):745–48. 20. OR, 30(2):745–48; Chalmers, “Report of Operations,” 225.

176

West Tennessee and Beyond

its way to Corinth. After fighting for four hours and losing about fifty men, Richardson withdrew to Byhalia Creek, where Chalmers joined him on the twelfth. Here they fought six mounted Union regiments before falling back toward Wyatte.21 Chalmers and Richardson entered Wyatte on the fourteenth, arriving in early afternoon with the Federals dogging their heels. After crossing to the south side of the river to leave their horses, the Rebels began a return crossing when the Yankees struck, reinforced by the 6th Tennessee and 3rd Illinois. McCrillis’s force now numbered 2,500 men compared with 1,600 for the Confederates. The fighting lasted for three hours before darkness allowed the grays to, in the words of Chalmers, “withdraw quietly across the river.” There they remained in entrenchments the following day as the Federals burned Wyatte and retired.22 During his October campaign, Chalmers wrote that “[b]oth the infantry and cavalry command of the enemy were guilty of many outrages in the destruction of houses and other private property, and, in some instances, in acts of robbery and cruel personal violence toward infirm and defenceless citizens.” In contrast, “[t]he conduct of the officers and men of [his] command, with few exceptions, was worthy of much praise.”23 On October 26 General Hurlbut ordered Hurst to move his regiment toward “Bolivar and Jackson, covering the country east of the Memphis and Ohio Railroad,” without scattering his regiment. Hurlbut’s order is instructive with the problems not only confronting the Federals in the area and their need for horses but also concerning the behavior of Hurst’s men. He commanded the colonel to suppress “with all necessary severity”—which the unionists were perfectly willing to do—“guerrilla and conscripting parties south of Trenton.” The men were to live off the countryside, while giving receipts for supplies taken and avoiding all “plundering or pillaging”—an urge difficult for many to resist or for Hurst to prevent. Horses “fit for Government service” should be seized by the regiment’s quartermaster upon issuing a receipt. Finally Hurst would inform the residents that they “must organize to put down robbers and guerrillas” or be subjected to a Federal force that would. Among other events during this raid, Capt. Joseph G. Barry of Company H and his men, after camping at Walnut Grove Baptist Church near Rutherford Station 21. Chalmers, “Report of Operations,” 225–28. 22. Ibid., 228–29. 23. Ibid., 229.

West Tennessee during 1863

177

in northern Gibson County, burned the building and its contents, perhaps to deny its use to guerrillas and recruiting squads in the area.24 After leaving his cavalry forces with Wheeler in Georgia, at his own request General Forrest assumed independent command of Confederate cavalry in northern Mississippi and West Tennessee in mid-November. Excluding about five hundred of Colonel Richardson’s men who on their own had “gone home to get heavier apparel for winter use,” the general had about six hundred cavalrymen. His instructions were to raise as many troops as possible. This Forrest would accomplish through operations in West Tennessee under capable colonels with personal influence among the section’s citizens. He sent Col. Tyree H. Bell ahead to survey the situation, to spread news of Forrest’s intention of occupying West Tennessee, and to select recruiters and secluded areas for concentrating recruits. Within two weeks Forrest hoped to join Bell at Jackson.25 Because General Hurlbut at Memphis in early November had, in his words, “abandon[ed] the line of railroad through to Corinth, holding only to Moscow with infantry and LaGrange with cavalry,” Forrest easily slipped around the enemy line to the east of LaGrange on December 4 and reached Jackson on the sixth. By then Bell already had raised an entire brigade of troops, but the Federals had been alerted to his success and to Forrest’s arrival. Still the Rebel commander operated at his own leisure as he busied his troopers, one unionist wrote, in “conscriping every man he could find, stealing every horse, cow, wagon, and in short everything he could use.” Eventually after Hurlbut failed to take action, General Grant ordered Union troops toward the Jackson area from Memphis, Fort Pillow, and Nashville as well as from Huntsville, Alabama, and Columbus, Kentucky. When his superiors denied Forrest reinforcements and he received information about the Federal forces heading his way, he decided to evacuate West Tennessee.26 After Christmas Day, when Forrest began his return to Mississippi with thousands of recruits—hundreds of whom were unarmed and unmounted— he divided his force into three groups. Hurst’s new commander in Memphis, Brig. Gen. Benjamin H. Grierson, ordered him to locate Forrest’s column, part of which he found crossing the swollen Hatchie River above Somerville. 24. OR, 31(1):750–51; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 81; Culp, “King’s Home Guard,” 55–78. 25. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 249–52. 26. OR, 31(3):81; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 254–58; James B. Bingham to Johnson, Jan. 2, 1864, PAJ, 6:533–36.

178

West Tennessee and Beyond

There a detachment of the 6th Tennessee skirmished along with other Union units. As the Federals retreated, they lost eight to ten killed and wounded and thirty-five prisoners. According to one report, that night at the Somerville fairgrounds, some “outlaws of Hurst” were shot by the Rebels since they felt the unionists merited no quarter.27 On January 20, 1864, Grierson ordered Hurst to return to Memphis by way of Jackson as soon as possible after February 1. First the colonel would be permitted to “relieve the wants of the families of the men of [his] command” before leaving Purdy. Then Grierson expected him en route to “scour the country” as well as to sustain his troopers off the countryside. In addition Hurst had orders to “gather all serviceable stock” and, if possible, to establish communication with Hawkins’s command at Union City, though not so as to delay his march to Memphis. This march took place in an environment of recent atrocities on both sides. A squad of Capt. John Wharton’s Rebel recruits from near Purdy tied young William Hurst, a member of his uncle’s regiment, and summarily “shot him between the eyes.” Then they invaded his nearby home. Seeking anything of value, they snatched the sheets from underneath “William’s bedridden mother causing her to fall on the floor and break her hip.” Unionists accused other Confederates of fatally shooting the wives of two Tories.28 Hurst galloped into Jackson on February 7 and assessed its residents the $5,139.25 earlier paid by his regiment for damages to the millinery shop owned by Mrs. Newman, who had since left. The colonel threatened to burn the town to the ground if its citizens failed to raise the money “in green backs” within five days. Aware that Hurst had already left Purdy with numerous “blackened walls, lone chimneys, and charred remains of buildings,” Jacksonians paid him in full on February 12. Notwithstanding the town’s compliance with their commander’s demand, Hurst’s men torched fourteen buildings there two weeks later. Within days of Hurst’s dealings with Jackson, his troopers captured and subsequently killed a squad of six of Captain Wharton’s soldiers, some of whom had been known to the unionists since childhood. The 6th Tennessee reputedly buried a man a mile from Purdy south toward Pocahontas. Hurst’s men also captured and killed seven men of Capt. John F. Newsom’s “irregular regiment” who were “recruiting, conscripting, and organizing.” Near 27. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 263–64; OR, 31(3):81–82, 500–501. 28. OR, 32(2):156; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 83.

West Tennessee during 1863

179

the main road north to Jackson from Purdy, the Tories reportedly “pinned their bodies to a tree as a warning.”29 A review of military events in West Tennessee in 1863 beyond Memphis indicates a number of conclusions. Grant and Sherman had given up on the use of the north–south railroads through that section but wanted to defend the west–east Memphis & Charleston as a highway into northern Mississippi and Alabama. The generals possessed scant interest, if any, in maintaining posts within the interior of West Tennessee, where they could be captured by enemy raiding parties for supplies and weapons, or even, for that matter, in fighting guerrillas. Sherman wrote: “I pay little attention to guerrillas. They have never attacked any place of note, and are chiefly engaged in harassing their own people, who merit little at our hands.” The two generals also possessed little confidence in any effort at pacification in West Tennessee through loyalty oaths and elections. But for the most part, the enemy in that region was neither the guerrilla nor the partisan raider but instead the regular cavalry of Nathan Bedford Forrest, first working through its officer-recruiters and then invading to bring out deserters, conscripts, and volunteers along with everything else that could supply the Wizard of the Saddle’s mounted army.30 Partially because of the situation in this “no-man’s land,” the war there was fought under what Mark Grimsley calls “hard war” policy, briefly summarized by Sooy Smith’s January 1864 “roving commission” to Hurst to “grup up” West Tennessee. Throughout the war Union officers had cautioned their men about the theft or destruction of private property and about violence against noncombatants, on occasion punishing them for such acts. And in April 1863 Lincoln approved a “codification of the rules of engagement” for the military in fighting the enemy, commonly known as General Order No. 100. But what the code “contributed to restraint . . . on one hand,” Harry S. Stout has noted, it “removed with the other as ‘military necessity.’ ” To a large degree the code justified many common practices of the Union army.31 On occasion Lincoln appears to have violated General Order No. 100 him29. Williams, Historic Madison, 178–80; OR, 32(1):592, 32(3):118–19; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 82–83. 30. Cotton, Grant Moves South, 280–81, 290, 301, 322–23, 335, 401; OR, 32(2):115; Cooling, “People’s War,” in Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 129, 131. 31. TICW, 1:335; Cooling, “People’s War,” 128; Henry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American Civil War (New York, 2006), 191–93.

180

West Tennessee and Beyond

self. An example of this is Washington’s acquiescence in the shooting of Confederate soldiers operating as recruiters behind Federal lines. When the Davis administration complained of this, Lincoln merely had such recruiters reclassified as spies, thereby allowing them to be executed. Confederates threatened to retaliate by killing a select group of imprisoned Union officers. The threat ended when Yankees captured Brig. Gen. William H. F. Lee, Robert E. Lee’s son, and announced that he would be executed if a single Union officer was put to death because of Lincoln’s policy regarding behind-the-lines recruiters. So the types of shootings Hurst and his men had perpetrated in West Tennessee continued.32 32. Lonnie R. Speer, War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation against Civil War POWs (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002), 85–93.

CHAPTER 11 Okolona

I

n December 1863 Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith, chief of cavalry for the Army of the Tennessee, selected Col. Daniel M. Ray’s brigade (2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tennessee) as part of an expedition into the interior of Mississippi to be coordinated with a raid by General Sherman farther south. Smith’s 7,000 cavalrymen, taken from his corps of 12,000, consisted of fourteen regiments in three brigades: one each at Nashville, Memphis, and Union City. At a meeting in Memphis during January 1864, Sherman outlined orally to Smith what he later transcribed: “A chief part of the enterprise was to destroy the rebel cavalry commanded by General Forrest.”1 Once they collected and outfitted their forces, the two generals would leave on February 1. Sherman would lead 20,000 infantrymen from Vicksburg to Meridian, a distance of 150 miles. There he would meet Smith, riding 230 miles from Collierville (near Memphis) on or about February 10. En route, as instructed, Smith was to confiscate or destroy enemy resources: seize horses and mules; burn “mills, barns, sheds, stables and such things”; and dismantle sections of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.2 On December 27 Ray’s brigade rode out Hillsboro Pike from Nashville, now in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. Unknown to all, they were heading for Collierville. Three days later at Columbia, General Smith met the brigade and replaced Ray temporarily with Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh of the 4th Tennessee. A disgruntled Ray returned to Nashville and resigned. He and Smith had dis1. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:377, 279; Sherman, Memoirs, 1:394; Wade to Sister Nellie, Dec. 1, 1863, Sgt. Benjamin F. Wade Papers, TSLA; OR, 32(2):326. 2. OR, 32(1):181–82.

182

West Tennessee and Beyond

agreed earlier over the leadership of Col. William R. Cook of the 2nd Tennessee, whom Ray accused of being slow to follow orders and of providing whiskey to his soldiers. Although Cook was dismissed from the army on charges of “gross neglect of duty” and misconduct, Smith—who apparently preferred Cook to Ray—soon restored Cook to his command.3 At Columbia troopers pressed numerous horses and mules from citizens in and near the town. On the last day of 1863, which began as an unseasonably warm and “drizzly day,” the afternoon turned stormy, snowy, and bitterly cold. Finding “anything that would burn,” the Tennesseans built fires to hover near through the night. In the morning they awoke to ghastly scenes of pickets frozen to death at their posts and of mud frozen to the hooves of their horses.4 On January 7, 1864, at Savannah, they crossed the Tennessee River on the small steamboat Blue Bird before riding through the “gloomy appearance” of the battlefield at Shiloh. At Corinth they found a Federal post but with most of the town’s “four or five hundred inhabitants not at home.” On the tenth a train moving west provided transportation; horses occupied the cars and the men clung to the top of the train. At LaGrange, fifty miles from Memphis, the 72nd Indiana, 5th Kentucky Mounted Infantry, and 4th U.S. Cavalry joined them, and all drew five days’ rations.5 At Collierville Smith gave Col. Lafayette McCrillis of the 3rd Illinois command of the Third Brigade less the 4th U.S., which served as the general’s escort. Lt. Col. William P. Hepburn’s Second Brigade of mostly Illinois cavalrymen also stood ready at Collierville. Col. George E. Waring Jr. and his First Brigade had not arrived from Union City because of what he called “the flooded condition of the difficult country . . . with its broad swamps.”6 Sherman left Vicksburg on February 3. Pushing aside small state cavalry forces, he reached Jackson three days later and Meridian by the middle of the month. For five days he remained as his troops “destroy[ed] an arsenal, immense storehouses, and the railroad in every direction.” Having heard nothing from Smith, Sherman pulled back to Canton, where he remained until March 3. 3. PAJ, 5:494n, 6:638n. 4. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 83–84; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 9, 10. 5. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 9, 10. Lyman B. Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry (Burlington, Iowa, 1865), 59; Alderson, “Reminiscences of John Johnston,” THQ 14 (June 1955): 155. 6. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 543–44; B&L, 4:417.

Okolona

183

Then learning of Smith’s failure to accomplish his mission, Sherman returned to Vicksburg.7 Meanwhile Waring, traveling a roundabout route through Jackson, Tennessee, did not reach Collierville until February 8. Like Stanley before Stones River, Smith ordered cavalrymen to grind their sabers “to a keen, sharp edge.” Although they obeyed, the Tennesseans saw “little difference between a well directed blow, whether the weapon was sharp or dull.” Smith also took parts of three more days preparing a pack train of seven hundred mules that should have been arranged in advance. He issued each man of Waring’s 2nd New Jersey one or two mules with special pack-saddles, made mostly of wood, to transport ammunition, commissary, “mess kettles, frying pans, coffeepots, tin cups, etc.” On a trot the pack train made a loud, irritating clanging.8 On February 7, to deceive the enemy, Smith had Col. William L. McMillen’s infantry brigade march south. Smith marched out of Collierville on the morning of February 10, the day he should have met Sherman at Meridian. By any measure Smith traveled prepared. He had a brigade of infantry in his advance to create a diversion. He led a combat-tested, fully equipped, and well-armed cavalry supported by twenty pieces of artillery. Both he and his second in command, General Grierson, taken along “as a sort of supernumerary,” were experienced officers. Smith had led a brigade of infantry at Shiloh and Corinth and a division of infantry at Perryville and Vicksburg. Grierson had conducted a notable raid through Mississippi in spring 1863. Other than for Forrest and his officers, the Federals faced a less experienced and smaller force assembled with raw recruits.9 After skirmishing much of the way as it covered twenty miles the first day, McCrillis’s brigade bivouacked on R. Rafford’s plantation near Holly Springs, allowing the other columns to catch up. McCrillis posted 4th Tennessee pickets on a slope beside a grassy field near “a deep ravine [with] a thick undergrowth.” During daylight the pickets could see for a distance. But at night they could be seen by “the light of the sky.” By setting a grassfire, Rebels in the undergrowth scrambled unseen to within a few feet of the sentinels. Aim7. Sherman, Memoirs, 1:394. 8. George E. Waring Jr., Whip and Spur (Boston, 1875), 105–8; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 72–73; OR, 32(2):326, 358. 9. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 269, 271–72; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 359, 776; Johnston, “Forrest’s March,” 138–48; Pierce, Second Iowa, 81.

184

West Tennessee and Beyond

ing carefully, they killed two and wounded two others. When bluecoats implicated Rafford’s neighbors, enraged comrades of the pickets retaliated— they “burn[ed] everything they could set fire to.” On picket duty the following night, the 4th had three more killed and four more wounded.10 When in the advance on February 12, the 4th Tennessee met resistance. Sgt. John Harvey Murphy “boldly led his little squad” into what became “his last charge.” Two other men fell beside him. Placing the dead soldiers on their horses, the brigade rode on to Holly Springs, a beautiful town before the war, now desolate. Here the 4th buried its dead, and General Smith wasted hours giving the loyalty oath to elderly residents. Before night McCrillis’s Third Brigade entered the road through Tippah Swamp with what one Federal called the “screeching things of the sky . . . and the creeping, crawling things of the earth.” Reaching a small knoll, it halted for the night.11 On February 13 McMillen’s infantry moved to Wyatte on the Tallahatchie River, making it appear that the cavalry would cross there. Smith rode in that direction, opposed only by state militia, but quickly swung east and crossed unmolested at New Albany. That day McCrillis’s Third Brigade marched to within two miles of New Albany. McCrillis had Cook’s 2nd Tennessee “secure the bridge” over the Tallahatchie “and make all repairs necessary for crossing the troops.” That night brash bushwhackers attempted to penetrate the picket line by dressing and talking as women. But when the guards wounded one of them, it “settled the question of sex.”12 The next day the Second and Third Brigades crossed the bridge. They camped no more than a mile from one another about five miles from New Albany. McCrillis halted on the road to Pontotac at the plantation of a Mr. Duncan, who had gone south. With the help of slaves, the horsemen found “a large amount of bacon stored in a cellar under a Negro house . . . and two or three barrels of brandy buried in cottonseed” in a shed. Pvt. Adam Wilson of Company A, 3rd Tennessee, always “into some mischief, came near causing a serious affair.” Foraging alone, he wandered away from the main road almost to the parallel road where the Second Brigade camped. Seeing through the haze of “a foggy, damp day,” he mistook Hepburn’s men for Rebels. He fired, and 10. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 86; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 16; McGee, 72nd Indiana, 267; OR, 32(1):303. 11. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 87–88; Cogley, Seventh Indiana, 88. 12. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 87–88; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 271–72; McGee, 72nd Indiana, 269; OR, 32(1):303.

Okolona

185

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Mississippi

they returned the favor. Each brigade, thinking it was under attack, sounded “boots and saddles.” Wilson wounded one trooper of the 3rd Tennessee before everyone realized their mistake.13 On February 16 Waring arrived at New Albany and his brigade crossed the Tallahatchie River, except for a detachment of the 19th Pennsylvania escorting prisoners back to Memphis. With his command concentrated around New Albany, Smith ordered McCrillis to take the advance toward Houston and to dispatch scouts south toward Oxford, Coffeeville, and Okolona. Hours before daylight on the eighteenth, McCrillis dispatched Thornburgh’s 4th Tennessee to cover the right flank of the main column. Finding enemy pickets at the Houston–Okolona crossroad, Thornburgh dismounted one hundred of his horsemen and a small detachment of the 3rd Illinois. Together they drove the 13. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 38–39.

186

West Tennessee and Beyond

pickets into a swamp a half mile away. Advancing on into the swamp with a few men mounted on their flanks, they skirmished until daylight, killing seven graybacks before discovering the pickets’ camp and driving off its soldiers. Then they formed in the rear of Smith’s division about four miles away.14 On the nineteenth before daybreak, McCrillis sent Maj. William F. Prosser’s battalion of the 2nd Tennessee southwest toward Buena Vista. Three miles out Prosser frightened off “25 or 30” well-mounted gray scouts, who left him only their pack mules. Riding on eleven more miles, he encountered by chance what remained of the camp of Maj. Gen. Samuel J. Gholson’s division of Mississippi militia: the men of one regiment cooking their lunch without having posted any pickets. In haste Prosser’s advance fired on the camp, then the major, “always up in military tactics, turned in his saddle and in a shrill voice ordered a charge.” His cavalry “raised the war whoop” and put spurs to their horses, causing the enemy to flee—the mounted grays to the road and the dismounted to the woods—before returning to the brigade later that afternoon.15 On that snowy day the other brigades arrived at Okolona. Near one of the Confederacy’s richest agricultural areas, Okolona was called by many “the granary of the Southern army.” Describing events two days later, Waring wrote, “The sky was red with the flames of burning corn and cotton.” On one grand plantation, when slaves saw the flames from the burning of 27,000 bushels of corn by Union cavalrymen and the movement of the Yankee troops on their horses, they “swarmed from the quarters to join [Waring’s] column.” The slaves torched the “mansion house, stables, cotton gin, and [their] quarters until the whole village-like settlement was blazing.”16 Approximately two thousand slaves, along with a thousand mules, joined the Yankees during those two days, greatly lengthening Smith’s column. “God bless you. Has you come at last? We’re been lookin for you so long, we’d most done give it up were often repeated expressions,” wrote one Indiana soldier. McCrillis’s brigade, now miles to the rear, “traveled all night by the light of the fires.” As planned, all three brigades converged on West Point by sunset on February 20. There McCrillis’s men burned the depot and ripped up the railroad tracks. Meanwhile Forrest concentrated his entire command of seven brigades and three batteries south of West Point along the Sakatonchee River 14. Ibid.; McGee, 72nd Indiana, 269; OR, 32(1):303, 307, 313. 15. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 73; OR, 32(1):303, 311. 16. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 74; OR, 32(1):252; Waring, Whip and Spur, 111–15.

Okolona

187

and to the west along the Tibbee River. To prevent a crossing of the Tombigbee River, he dispatched Bell’s brigade east to Columbus.17 Penned in on three sides, Smith believed that he had either to advance or to return to Memphis. In addition to his three brigades and an array of pack mules, wagons, and ambulances, the Federal column also included two hundred prisoners, three thousand captured horses and mules, and fifteen hundred black refugees. Only a few of Smith’s men, who contracted smallpox, had returned in a wagon train to Memphis. He now faced Forrest’s seven brigades and three batteries, an estimated ten thousand troops, securely situated behind creeks and rivers. Smith knew Sherman in all likelihood had returned to Vicksburg by now. Believing that he could do no great harm to Forrest, but that the Rebel could seriously damage him and that Sherman had said “he could get along without [him] if [he] found it impassible to get through,” Smith decided to return to Memphis, hoping en route to engage the enemy on his terms rather than those of Forrest.18 On February 21 McCrillis’s brigade, along with the 4th U.S., rode north in the advance unmolested, while skirmishing happened in the rear of the column. The 2nd Tennessee’s 275 men covered the rear in an orderly manner for the three miles until it neared Okolona, “a small but nicely built railroad town . . . on high ground” with mostly “two-story houses.” The advance camped short of town about dark as the other two brigades passed until after midnight. Camped near the 4th U.S. was the 2nd Tennessee, supported by the 3rd Tennessee in town. The 4th Tennessee had ridden beyond to the north.19 According to Forrest’s authorized account of his campaigns, as the bluecoats “thronged into and through Okolona,” Col. Clarke R. Barteau’s gray brigade got “within six hundred yards” of the town’s “east side.” By then Forrest was pressing Smith’s rearguard into Okolona’s “western suburbs,” where the Federals formed “in force in several lines.” Johnny Rebs cheered as Forrest appeared, and he responded with his familiar order to “Move up!” When the green young Rebels moving north got “within one hundred yards of the enemy,” they fired “their long rifles.” But bluecoats, with their “short, breechloading firearms,” were able to “stagger . . . [them] for some moments.” To turn the tide, Forrest ordered a dismounted charge by those within the sound of his 17. Larson, Sergeant Larson, 222; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 40; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 276–77; Merrill, Soldier of Indiana, 2:564; OR, 32(1):252. 18. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:382–83; Pierce, Second Iowa, 84–85; OR, 32(1):258. 19. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 74–75.

188

West Tennessee and Beyond

voice. About the same time, McCulloch’s mounted brigade galloped toward them from the south, “throwing the Federals into the ensuing confusion.” One Yankee wrote that this was greeted with delight by the town’s ladies, who “hung half out of the [upper-story] windows and waved small Confederate flags and handkerchiefs.”20 From Smith’s viewpoint—probably acquired from his own 4th U.S. escort on the scene—the 2nd Tennessee “cover[ing] the passage of our column . . . , broke from [their] line into [the] column to move off, [then] stampeded, and galloped over our rearguard . . . , spread[ing] confusion everywhere.” McCrillis, who was on the scene, found the stampede a little more complicated. According to him, “a superior force . . . outflanked” the 2nd Tennessee and the 4th U.S., causing them to “retire in haste upon the column.” Then when the 3rd Tennessee on McCrillis’s orders rushed forward, they became “mixed up” as they rode headlong into the retreating column.21 Major McBath, reporting for the 2nd Tennessee, wrote that the 4th U.S. had just relieved the 2nd as the rearguard when attacked and advanced against the enemy before being “repulsed with considerable loss.” When Major Prosser’s battalion of the 2nd moved “out of the column into line to support [the] retreat of the Fourth,” it threw “the rear of the column . . . into confusion.” During these few minutes, the 2nd lost fourteen men killed and wounded, including Lieutenant Colonel Cook, severely wounded and captured. As Lieutenant Andes of the 2nd saw it, “Before our lines were formed the enemy charged us in force.” It was either “fall back . . . or be captured.” Soon both sides were “jumbled up together without reference to lines or commands.”22 Sgt. B. F. McGee of the 72nd Indiana Mounted Infantry prefaced his account with a failure in command by the Third Brigade’s commander, Colonel McCrillis. “Instead of withdrawing in line of battle,” he wrote, “we began to withdraw in column.” When “the wily Forrest” noticed this, he “dashed . . . upon us and caused a stampede.” Although the 4th U.S. “stood up manfully against the rebel host . . . , they were driven back upon the 2d Tennessee, in some confusion.” This in turn provided the circumstance under which the 2nd “became panic stricken and broke like stampeded buffalo, and ran like wild 20. Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 392–94; Pierce, Second Iowa, 87; R. R. Hancock, Hancock’s Diary, or a History of the Second Tennessee Cavalry (Nashville, 1887), 320–23. 21. OR, 32(1):252–53. 22. Ibid., 312; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 75–76.

Okolona

189

horses.” This caused a general stampede, filled with multiplying confusion and its accompanying disorganization.23 Some regiments are most often described as hastily fleeing. Little doubt exists about whom members of the 4th U.S. blamed: the 2nd Tennessee and the 2nd New Jersey Cavalry. General Smith too, in a speech delivered immediately after the battle, condemned the two regiments. He singled out those units as having been assigned to rescue the 4th. Instead they ran even before coming “within range of enemy bullets,” then “stamped[ed] in plain view of the enemy.”24 Some felt that General Smith himself should share in the blame for Okolona. He had stretched out his column far too long for an orderly retreat and had positioned hundreds of contraband in its front. If he wanted to engage the enemy later in the open country as he said he did, an orderly retreat was essential. According to Colonel Waring, the failure at Okolona occurred partly because of “the hurried retreat of the day before.” Discerning no reason for haste, McCrillis’s Third Brigade “imagined itself” pursued by an overwhelming enemy.” The brigade also “had lost all confidence in the commanding general.” Being in the column’s advance, he appeared to be leading the retreat. Under the circumstances “its discipline dissolved.”25 Beyond Okolona “small ridges [crossed] the road, elevating it every few hundred yards.” Thornburgh briefly rallied the 4th Tennessee to the right of the road in a field, but he could not hold his men in place because fleeing cavalry kept breaking through his line. He formed his men twice again, once behind buildings near a crossroad and again in woods four hundred yards down the road. Here his troopers “poured several volleys into the enemy,” he reported, and held their line only long enough to prevent the 4th U.S. and 2nd Tennessee from being cut off by Forrest’s cavalry. Then he retreated.26 Fortunately for Thornburgh and others, Colonel Waring had formed a battle line with skirmishers on his flanks, leaving the road open for McCrillis’s fleeing cavalry. After the stampeding bluecoats rode through his line, Waring fell back to a more secure position. Then later he moved to a site selected by Smith. Having finally recognized the seriousness of the situation, the general 23. McGee, 72nd Indiana, 272. 24. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:386–87; Larson, Sergeant Larson, 221, 222–27, 232. 25. Waring, Whip and Spur, 117–18. 26. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 43; OR, 32(1):268, 284, 295, 315, 353.

190

West Tennessee and Beyond

rode from his position in the advance to the rear. Thornburgh, as ordered by Smith, rode north to the pack train, rested his mounts, and gathered up his stragglers before placing his men dismounted in line of battle.27 About seven miles from Okolona, as the terrain turned from “open prairie into a wooded and hilly country,” Smith halted his retreating cavalry at a farm called Ivey’s Hill. On a ridge stood the plantation manor, slave houses, stables, and gin house overlooking “a large body of cleared land.” At the southern end of the height, the road from Okolona ran “directly along the backbone . . . of [the] ridge.” As it neared the manor, the road made a severe turn right.28 Smith decided to make his stand. “In the actual presence of the first real personal danger,” wrote Waring, “Smith became brave and cool.” At 5:00 p.m. the general massed what remained of his artillery and placed it near the road. He also created breastworks from rails and logs around the manor. Then he formed two lines of cavalry, with the front line being what one Tennessean called “a hollow square,” a gap in the middle with dismounted cavalry on each side. Near the road to the right of the battery, Smith positioned the 4th Missouri and the 7th Indiana Mounted and beyond them the 3rd Tennessee on the right flank; they were assigned to charge the enemy with the first volley. On his second line Smith deployed the remainder of McCrillis’s brigade, including the 2nd and 4th Tennessee, dismounted along the ridge.29 Forrest approached on the road with twelve hundred cavalrymen in two brigades: his brother Jeffrey “on the right . . . in columns of fours” and Colonel McCulloch on the left “in like manner.” The Rebels rode slowly, protected by woods to the right of the road. Beyond the trees to the cleared land of the plantation, they formed a line of battle. As instructed the Federals held their fire until the enemy reached within three hundred yards. At that point they fired a volley that emptied “a large number of saddles,” including that of Colonel Forrest, “shot through the neck.” As the firing momentarily ceased, the general came over and knelt, cradled, and “kissed” his dear baby brother, whom he admired, before lowering his body and “spread[ing] his handkerchief over his face.”30 The volley signaled a charge by the 4th Missouri, the 7th Indiana Mounted, 27. Waring, Whip and Spur, 119; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 281–88; OR, 32(1):315. 28. Waring, Whip and Spur, 119; B&L, 4:417; Hancock, Diary, 324; Cogley, Seventh Indiana, 96. 29. Waring, Whip and Spur, 119; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 151. 30. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 288–92; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 151–52; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 78–79; James Dinkins, Furl That Banner: Per-

Okolona

191

and the 3rd Tennessee. Smith’s assistant adjutant, 1st Lt. William H. Ingerton, led the 3rd Tennessee’s first battalion with sabers in hand, “rais[ed] a wild yell and charg[ed] in a perfect line.” Its second battalion “followed in equally as pretty a movement.” Even Forrest described it as “the grandest cavalry charge he ever witnessed.” “See that!” exclaimed a Captain Perkins of McCrillis’s staff. “Why can’t the d——d Tennesseans do that?” Being informed that “it was the Third Tennessee that made the charge,” he was “crestfallen.”31 But the charge failed to sever the Rebel line because Forrest’s cavalrymen found refuge behind “a high stake-and-rider fence,” forcing the bluecoats to replace their sharp sabers in hand with their pistols and soon withdraw. That night both sides found themselves equally exhausted and mutually in need of “refreshment for man and beast.” During the lull disorganized regiments, especially in McCrillis’s brigade, attempted to locate stragglers; commanders dispatched criers to call the name of the regiment around which to rally. At midnight Smith’s army rode on, endeavoring to gain a day on the enemy. Having been in the saddle almost all of three days and nights, a few drowsy cavalrymen strayed out of the column or fell from their mounts.32 When Smith reached the other side of Pontotoc, Forrest halted and sent ahead General Gholson with his division of Mississippi militia to harass the rear of the enemy. Smith sent Lt. Sanders McMahan directly to Memphis with a detachment of Company E, 2nd Tennessee with the ambulance train “filled . . . with convalescent soldiers.” After crossing the Tallahatchie River, McCrillis’s brigade “barricaded themselves, using fence rails.” But Gholson stopped short of the ford and relinquished the chase. This enabled the brigade to move on and to arrive at Germantown, outside of Memphis, on the night of February 26.33 En route to Memphis two cavalrymen of the 3rd Tennessee began to discuss God and His relationship to what had happened. “One said he couldn’t see how God Almighty could separate the good from the bad [on] the day of judgment” since the two armies that fought “on the same field [were] thrown together in confusion [and] died together.” After some deliberation the other

sonal Recollections and Experiences in the Confederate Army (Cincinnati, 1897), 135; J. P. Young, The Seventh Tennessee Cavalry (Confederate): A History (Nashville, 1890), 78. 31. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 78–79; OR, 32(1):259. 32. Hancock, Diary, 325–30. 33. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 294; Hancock, Diary, 330.

192

West Tennessee and Beyond

soldier replied: “Very easy. He will just order every man to rejoin his regiment, and then they are separated.”34 During the expedition Smith’s three brigades lost 54 killed, 179 wounded, and had about 155 taken as prisoners, a total of 388 men, about 100 of whom were from the 4th U.S. Cavalry. Of those losses, the three Tennessee regiments’ total casualties were 51 men, more than one out of eight of Smith’s total losses. Most of these soldiers were from the 4th Tennessee, which lost 37 men. The 2nd Tennessee lost 9 men, and the 3rd only 5. Forrest reported only 27 killed, 97 wounded, and 20 missing.35 Smith’s army burned enormous amounts of grain and cotton, thereby significantly curtailing output in a highly productive section heretofore unravished by war. Bluecoats destroyed about thirty miles of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad along with nearby quartermaster and commissary stores. They also returned to Memphis with approximately fifteen hundred slaves and hundreds of horses and mules.36 After Smith disbanded his expeditionary force, he instructed each regiment to report to its former command. McCrillis relinquished his brigade to the 4th Tennessee’s Colonel Thornburgh, who would report to Nashville. Smith ordered Thornburgh to cross West Tennessee in a northeasterly direction toward Fort Henry in order to drive out Rebel recruiters. Thornburgh departed on March 5. According to Sgt. James W. Goodwin of the 4th Tennessee, when the horsemen found “no means to cross the [Hatchie] river at Bolivar,” they “tore down an old house” and built “a floating bridge” to cross the stream. As they traversed the region, according to Forrest, the bluecoats captured and shot to death three on-duty soldiers in McNairy, Madison, and Henderson counties.37 On March 18 the “dirty, ragged, and weary” troopers of the brigade reached Nashville, where they were greeted by the 8th, 9th, and 10th Tennessee Cavalry. They drew new clothing and received pay for the first time in months. For about three weeks these homegrown Yankees camped a short distance from the penitentiary, enjoying a good rest, visiting with long-unseen friends, 34. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 96. 35. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 44; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 331–86; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:389. 36. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 44; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 331–86; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:389. 37. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 46–47; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 19.

Okolona

193

and spending their greenbacks on the traveling show of “Old John Robinson,” then the main attraction in Nashville.38 Because of the large number of smallpox victims in the capital, on April 11 the brigade’s camp moved eight miles west along the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad to William G. Harding’s Belle Meade plantation. Soon the health of the brigade improved. They named their post Camp Catlett in honor of Maj. Albert C. Catlett of the 3rd Tennessee, a “loved and respected” Baptist preacher turned soldier who had died on March 23 of smallpox.39 The soldiers staked their tents on ground running “from the railroad track to a rippling brook.” The gradual slope provided the camp “splendid drainage.” Nearby lay a level field where they drilled “with all the rigging of a cavalryman” twice a day for two hours. Stables and rich pastureland nurtured their “jaded horses.” When not on drill the horses grazed and “enlarge[d] their much-shrunken sides.”40 While there and up until July 1864, the 3rd Tennessee’s Lt. Col. Duff G. Thornburgh, a brother of Col. Jacob Thornburgh, commanded the brigade. “A strict disciplinarian,” he took pride in improving the efficiency and health of his troops, going so far as to “personally inspect the camps daily.” One lovely spring day, while the men were on dress parade, Thornburgh drove his new “beautiful bride” to be, Della Samuels, down to review the troops. As the couple rode “down the line . . . , the [soldiers] stood at present arms.”41 This and other occasional distractions added a little variety to the scene at Camp Catlett. Peddlers from the Belle Meade vicinity visited regularly, from little girls with buckets of milk and baskets of pies to old men with wagons loaded with vegetables, milk, and bread. John Tanley, their favorite peddler, would drive his wagon into camp and leave it in the hands of a few soldiers to sell its contents. Later he would return, sometimes sober and at other times drunk, collect his money, and ride away.42 On the afternoon of April 16, a two-hundred-yard-wide storm with lightning and thunder and tornadic winds struck the camp. The merciless wind uprooted trees and leveled all the tents, tearing some to shreds. It even blew one 38. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 98, 105. 39. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 47; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 101; Hancock to Nancy Hancock, Apr. 14, 1864, William Hancock Papers, TSLA. 40. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 47. 41. Ibid. 42. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 103.

194

West Tennessee and Beyond

of the boxcars off the tracks of the nearby Nashville & Northwestern Railroad and scattered the papers of the brigade and regimental officers down the line for miles. Maj. Samuel Pickens of the 3rd Tennessee, who was cooking flapjacks near the track when the storm arrived, abandoned his cooking, fell to the ground, and seized “the railing of the railroad . . . until the storm was over.”43 While the cavalrymen camped west of Nashville, some of their wives and children had found their way to Nashville by rail from East Tennessee and resided east of the city at Edgefield. By summer 1864 at least five hundred such refugees tried to return to their homes. Unfortunately for them Sherman had all of the southbound railroads devoted to supporting his campaign against Atlanta. One large “barracks-like building” in Nashville, which became known as the “Refugee House,” served as a home for women and their children not only from East Tennessee but also from the northern parts of Alabama and Georgia as well as western North Carolina. The Refugee House was well below wholesome. Surgeon J. B. Mitchell of the 12th Tennessee Cavalry claimed that some families “would rather go into the woods than to the ‘Refugee House.’ ” By August the army command began formulating plans to create a refugee camp from surplus tents.44 There was plenty of blame to share for Okolona, all involving circumstances that affected the Tennesseans. Sherman blamed Sooy Smith for starting his march to Meridian too late and for having “allowed General Forrest to head him off and to defeat him with an inferior force.” Waring as well blamed Smith, whom he felt had set up McCrillis’s brigade for failure by demoralizing it the day before and had set up his own division for failure by distending the column far too long for an orderly retreat—a necessary prerequisite to defeat Forrest in open country. Some troopers in McCrillis’s brigade—as observed by Sergeant McGee of the 72nd Indiana—viewed their colonel as the culprit in the withdrawal from Okolona. Certainly the 2nd Tennessee precipitated the stampede.45 No one stepped forward to accept the blame for causing the Federal panic. Perhaps the individual closest to indicating any such feeling was Maj. John B. 43. Ibid., 101–2; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 48. 44. Durham, Reluctant Partners, 21–22, 102–3; Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator, July 23, 1864; John F. Miller to Johnson, July 31, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 151–52; J. B. Mitchell to Johnson, July 2, 1864, PAJ, 7:5–6. 45. Sherman, Memoirs, 1:394.

Okolona

195

Minnis of the 3rd Tennessee. In writing his report of the entire campaign, he asked that one “consider the inexperience of the major commanding [himself] and the men under him in the field, and give justice to all.” Such would not always be the case. Regrettably the reputation acquired by the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee at Okolona would haunt them.46 It is easy to place all the emphasis in the expedition on Smith’s failure to defeat Forrest and to meet Sherman at Meridian about February 10. Too little attention is given to Smith’s fulfilling that part of his instructions that extended his delay beyond the concerns for the weather: Sherman’s instruction to seize or destroy the resources of the Confederacy, including “mills, barns, sheds, stables, and such things,” the types of property Sherman destroyed en route to Meridian. Such destruction coincided with the Union army’s new hard-war policy and what Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones have called the “strategy of raids” to deplete the enemy’s resources and demoralize the civilian population. To a large degree a “decisive battle” strategy as well as a strategy of occupation of territory thus far had only prolonged the war. Now, especially in the expansive western theater, a less costly means to victory for the Union army was tried, one more costly for the enemy in the depletion of manpower, resources, and morale. Union raids big and small would ultimately defeat the Confederacy in the West.47 46. OR, 32(1):312. 47. Ibid., 171–82; Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, 487–96; Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 162–64.

CHAPTER 12 Union City

I

n mid-March 1864 General Forrest, hoping to increase his army by collecting deserters, conscripts, and coming-of-age volunteers, left Mississippi on an expedition into West Tennessee and western Kentucky. Along the way he would seize supplies and horses, disrupt the enemy’s lines of communication, and boost civilian morale by punishing Tennessee Tories. Since January Colonel Hurst had carried out his “roving commission” from Sooy Smith to “grup up” West Tennessee, and since February Maj. William F. Bradford’s new battalion at Fort Pillow had harassed citizens east to Brownsville. Of course threats and worse assailed known unionists. At Bolivar Forrest’s scouts posted warnings against any citizen voting in the county election called for March 5 by Governor Johnson.1 At Purdy, according to Maj. Charles W. Anderson, Forrest’s chief of staff, Hurst and his cavalry had “laid in ashes the homes of absent Confederate soldiers” along with those of “a number of [its] citizens . . . in sympathy with the South.” One young woman who tied the fire to the loss of “the only pair of horses in town which belonged to [Colonel] Hurst,” wrote that the unionist’s victims had “lived in the churches & [the] college.” They probably found refuge in the wooden Methodist sanctuary, the brick Presbyterian sanctuary, and the “two-story brick” college called Purdy University. The “substantial frame structure” of the Baptist church had burned earlier. Since two regiments of Forrest’s army included soldiers from McNairy County, the general feared that the men would torch Hurst’s house, as well as those of innocent unionists, and 1. OR, 32(3):117–19, 593–94; Lonnie E. Maness, “A Ruse That Worked: The Capture of Union City in 1864,” WTHSP 30 (1976): 93–94; TICW, 1:335; ORS, 65:528, 530; Proclamation Ordering Elections, Jan. 26, 1864, PAJ, 6:594–96; John Houston Bills Diary, Mar. 5, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Union City

197

thus foment further damage to Purdy by Hurst and others. So in accordance with community leaders (with whom he met), Forrest issued orders to prevent the destruction of property. Much to the gratitude of Melocky Hurst—“a kind person [with] many friends”—Forrest sent Anderson ahead with a guard to Hurst’s house. The general in turn promised town leaders that if he caught Hurst and his men, he would “wipe them off the face of the earth.”2 At Jackson, partly in response to additional complaints about Hurst, Forrest declared, “Fielding Hurst, and . . . his command of outlaws, are not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war [if] falling into the hands of the forces of the Confederate States.” He also heard from an angry delegation of Brownsville citizens. They accused Tennessee Tories from Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi River forty miles above Memphis, of riding through the countryside with only “the pretense of scouring . . . for arms and ‘rebel soldiers.’ ” Instead they spent their time “robbing the people of their horses, mules, beef cattle . . . , money, and every . . . article of value.” They also accused the unionists of mistreating “the wives and daughters of Southern soldiers” by making them victims of “their hate and lust.” They wanted Forrest to leave behind a brigade to protect them against those outlaws.3 The general knew that deserters and men avoiding conscription had taken refuge at the fort as members of Bradford’s Battalion, some of whom had been captured and threatened with execution by the Confederacy. Major Bradford had imprisoned a few Confederates at the fort, including for a while the Reverend George W. D. Harris of Dyersburg, the sixty-seven-year-old presiding elder of the Memphis Conference of the Methodist Church and older brother of governor-in-exile Isham Harris (who accompanied Forrest). More important militarily to Forrest than the depredations, desertions, and imprisonments was the plentiful presence of horses and supplies within the fort. But he was moving north to Kentucky and would make his decision regarding Fort Pillow when he returned to Jackson.4 Determined to destroy the army post at Union City in Obion County occu2. Charles W. Anderson, “Gen. Forrest among Civilians,” CV 3 (Apr. 1895): 106; Emma Inman Williams, ed., “Hettie Wisdom Tapp’s Memoirs,” WTHSP 36 (1982): 123; Adams, “Old Purdy,” 10–13. 3. OR, 32(3):117, 119; Richard L. Fuchs, An Unerring Fire: The Massacre at Fort Pillow (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002), 24–25, 39; Alderson, “Reminiscences of John Johnston,” THQ 13 (Dec. 1954): 330. 4. Grant to Joseph E. Johnston, Feb. 26, 1864, in Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 18 vols. (Carbondale, Ill., 1967–1991), 10:155–56; W. W. Herron, “A History of Lambuth College,” WTHSP 10 (1956): 28.

198

West Tennessee and Beyond

pied by Hawkins’s 7th Tennessee, Forrest issued an ultimatum to Lt. William Witherspoon, along with other members of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA), to “clean . . . up” their homegrown Yankee counterparts or “never come back.” Billy Witherspoon and others knew they would be fighting “neighbor boys.” But he thought they would win since Hawkins’s men “had not been fighting to any extent,” whereas they had been “constantly fighting.” Witherspoon and his fellow troopers considered Hawkins’s Federals “more marauders and pilferers than fighters,” members of a lower “class of mankind.” Still they recognized their own challenge: the Tories at Union City would be fighting on the defensive behind walls and various other obstacles.5 When Forrest entered West Tennessee, Hurst—then at Fort Pickering in southern Memphis—received a message from General Grierson “to hang upon and harass the enemy with a view of impeding his movements.” In doing so he was to concentrate on “captur[ing] foraging parties” and avoid “a general engagement.” After establishing his base at Whiteville, Hurst rode with about 650 men toward Bolivar. There Col. James J. Neeley, a local native, and his Rebel brigade occupied a dirt fort built by the Yankees on a hill a mile and a half west of town offering views to the west and south. When they pursued Hurst upon his approach, first dismounted and then mounted, the bluecoats fled west. The Federals paused briefly to form a line of battle at a woolen factory along a small stream before riding on to Whiteville to form another line of battle, then retreated again when attacked. Neeley now stopped the chase. Reportedly Hurst had fled “hatless,” leaving behind “75 prisoners . . . , all his wagons, ambulances, papers, and his mistresses, both black and white.” Union casualties included Sgt. R. H. Beazley of Company K, initially wounded and captured before being taken by two troopers of the “7th Tennessee Rebel Cavalry” to a nearby home and murdered.6 Hurst returned to Fort Pickering to help protect Memphis. Being there may have saved his regiment, but he was unhappy. The men, he wrote, had “entered the Service for the purpose of defending their homes.” Yet they were away “from their homes, while the Rebels . . . float[ed] at large, Sacking, burning, and plundering.” They were robbing his men’s “families of all they [had] to Subsist upon.” He also resented “guarding Rebel Property” in a largely dis5. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 101–3. 6. OR, 32(1):623, 32(3):145; Blankinship, “Fielding Hurst,” 84; Alderson, “John Johnston,” THQ 14 (Sept. 1955): 172–75; R. H. Beazley, 6th Tennessee, CSR; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 418–19.

Union City

199

loyal city whose “owners . . . live[d] luxuriently under the protection of [his] Government.”7 Meanwhile Colonel Hawkins’s 7th Tennessee replaced Colonel Waring’s brigade at Union City. General Hurlbut initially ordered Hawkins, whom he considered “a very inferior officer,” from LaGrange to Union City in late October 1863 to have his small regiment act as “the nucleus of recruiting” in that area. But because of the heavy use of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad for the buildup of Federals at Chattanooga, Hurlbut agreed to retain temporarily the 7th with Hurst’s 6th at LaGrange. Yet he condemned both regiments for having “behaved badly” there and the 6th for having recently abandoned its post to be near Purdy. Later the general recalled the men of the 7th to Memphis, threatening to “make something of them or break them.” Having accomplished neither, he ordered them off to Union City. Hawkins’s regiment arrived at the railroad town in late November with only 175 troops.8 By January 1864, following some scouting and recruiting tours, Hawkins had increased his regiment’s strength to 364 men and by March to about 450, only a portion of whom were mounted. His seventy-square-yard base at Fort Halleck near the railroad station had high vertical timber, “walls of dirt . . . about ten feet high,” and portholes every few yards capped with logs. An abatis surrounding the work consisted of razor-sharp pointed poles closely arranged and facing outward. Land around the hamlet, wrote Colonel Waring, the fort’s former commander, was raised above the broad swamp just enough “to make possible” a saloon and a Methodist church. It was, he explained, “not a city at all; it was hardly a village [and] lay in the woods at the crossing of two railroads . . . , neither leading anywhere . . . , for Forrest” had visited there.9 But the railroad had recently been repaired north to Columbus, Kentucky, and the hamlet, incorporated since 1861, was at least once slightly larger than Waring remembered. Union City contained Pulliam’s Hotel—under “the sign of the Eagle”—near the depot, McGaugh’s General Store, a blacksmith shop, a saloon, a Christian church, and a nearby gristmill. Another individual remembered the town as containing “section houses, mud holes, and crossties.” Some homes had to take in army officers as boarders, and despite the “section houses,” the housing shortage proved severe. Hawkins’s troopers demolished 7. Hurst to Johnson, Apr. 29, 1864, PAJ, 6:685–86. 8. TICW, 1:334, 338. 9. Waring, Whip and Spur, 95–96, 99; OR, 32(2):107, 508.

200

West Tennessee and Beyond

the Christian church, previously used by them as a stable, to use its lumber for building a barracks.10 Early en route to Kentucky, Forrest had to stop bushwhacking against his column by “put[ting] out a good squad of flankers.” Once he reached Trenton he established a recruiting station before moving north into the Bluegrass State. On the morning of March 23, Hawkins’s scouts galloped into Union City with news that Forrest was in Jackson, sixty miles away, with “between six and seven thousand men and artillery.” By then the Rebel commander and his main column with artillery was well on their way toward Paducah, following the line of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. He ordered a detachment comprising the 7th Tennessee, commanded by Col. William L. Duckworth, a Mississippi physician and preacher, and Col. William W. Faulkner’s mounted remnants of three Kentucky infantry regiments, with Duckworth commanding, to occupy Union City.11 Before noon on the twenty-third, Hawkins received reports that Forrest’s advance approached Gardner’s Station to the east. Twice the colonel telegraphed information to his immediate superior in Cairo, Illinois, Brig. Gen. Mason Brayman, who himself remained “uncertain whether Paducah or Union City was the real object of attack.” Hawkins also telegraphed the railroad superintendent at Columbus, Kentucky, for a train to ship his “extra guns [and] tents north.” After the train arrived, the colonel also sent along his sick.12 Brayman believed that Forrest intended to bypass Union City and travel directly to Kentucky with his entire column. That afternoon he shocked Hawkins with a telegraph message inquiring about the number of troops the colonel could deploy to Graves County, Kentucky. Hawkins referred to his telegrams and told the general that Union City “should be immediately abandoned or heavily reinforced.” Brayman promised aid “to fortify and [to] fight” the enemy.13 Hawkins also received a dispatch from Brayman’s assistant adjutant general, Capt. James H. Odlin, at Columbus that he was leaving by train for Union City, twenty-six miles away. Odlin had orders to return with a locomotive and nine freight cars filled with government stores along with 150 contraband railroad workers and their tools. When the captain arrived after dark, Hawkins 10. Rebel C. Forrester, Glory and Tears (Union City, Tenn., 1970), 12, 75, 76–77, 82, 203–4. 11. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 102; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 301. 12. Charles L. Lufkin, “West Tennessee Unionists in the Civil War: A Hawkins Family Letter,” THQ 46 (spring 1987); 37; OR, 32(1):509. 13. OR, 32(1):509.

Union City

201

experienced another shock: Odlin brought “only a train guard.” The colonel told him that “any force to arrive after daylight would come too late.” But Odlin disagreed and retired for a rest. During the early morning hours, Lt. Elbert M. Royal of Company B and his scouts galloped in from Mink Station, northeast of Union City. He reported to Hawkins and Odlin—whom the colonel awoke—that he and his men had been fired on eight miles out after discovering a two-mile column of graycoats.14 Now convinced that Union City was at least one of Forrest’s targets, Odlin told Hawkins that he had to leave in order to save the contraband, supplies, and equipment. He requested that if possible, the colonel should hold the fort until he could get reinforcements but to at least engage the enemy if he had to retreat. The captain also informed him that any reinforcements would have to come from Brayman at Cairo, and with the telegraph line down, he could only communicate with Brayman from Columbus. Twenty minutes out his train crossed a burning bridge at State Line. One of Royal’s scouts now reported to Hawkins that the enemy approached “on all the roads east in heavy force, and that Royal had been cut off.”15 An hour before daylight on March 24, Colonel Faulkner’s command drove in Capt. Pleasant K. Parson’s pickets on the Troy road west of Union City. By daybreak Hawkins’s men saw that they were surrounded. The Kentucky colonel charged the fort’s southwest corner to within 120 yards before gunfire struck a number of his graycoats. Once Faulkner retreated, Hawkins’s men torched shanties standing outside the walls to illuminate the area for their sharpshooters and to prevent their usage by Confederates. Soon another regiment charged down the railroad tracks from the north, and Hawkins’s men repulsed them “with but little difficulty,” reported Capt. Thomas P. Gray of Obion County, commander of recently recruited Company L. Now the graybacks sought cover among the fallen timber surrounding the fort. Well into the morning, according to Capt. John W. Beattie, Hawkins’s men felt confident inside the fort. Some even slept as they waited.16 After dismounting at Union City, the Rebel 7th ran toward the stockade. Once the Confederates reached “the fallen timbers,” wrote Witherspoon, the 14. Ibid., 502–14. 15. Ibid. 16. Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 37, 38; OR, 32(1):541, 543–45; Maness, “Ruse That Worked,” 96; Gray to Johnson, May 12, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; John W. Beatty to Johnson, May 19, 1864, ibid.

202

West Tennessee and Beyond

men “got down on all fours” and crawled. “As a head would pop up through the portholes” of the stockade, possibly “through curiosity,” several graycoats fired, and “the owner of that head would be put out of service.” After an hour of “hap-hazard fighting,” leaving several Johnny Rebs wounded, a few officers convinced their commander, Colonel Duckworth, to “play . . . Forrest” by transmitting an ultimatum demanding that the garrison offer “a prompt and unconditional surrender or accept the dire consequences.”17 Around eleven o’clock that morning, Duckworth sent in a flag of truce without mentioning Hawkins, addressing his demand to the “Commanding Officer, U.S. Forces at Union City, Tennessee.” He noted that he had the fort “completely surrounded,” wanted “unconditional surrender,” promised to treat the bluecoats as “prisoners of war,” and issued a typical Forrest threat: “If you persist in defense, you must take the consequences.” Knowing it would carry weight, the colonel signed the message, “By Order of Major General N. B. Forrest.” He believed that Hawkins had agreed to the surrender at Trenton in 1862, thought he had been treated well at that time, and knew that he was known not “to be a dangerous or hard-fighting antagonist.”18 Hawkins asked to see Forrest personally and for time to consider the demand. When the Union colonel returned under the flag of truce, Duckworth told him that Forrest did not negotiate with officers below his rank. He then renewed the same demands and gave the colonel only a few minutes for an answer before bringing up artillery to “blow” Hawkins and his men “to hell.” Meanwhile Duckworth performed some of Forrest’s old tricks, such as placing logs on wagon wheels to resemble artillery and having “buglers . . . sound the artillery call” at different locations. He even managed to convince some of his own men that artillery was arriving.19 Hawkins met with his officers in council, told them what he knew, and sought his captains’ opinions. Virtually all agreed that the Federals “were all in good spirits” and that since General Brayman was sending reinforcements, they should fight on at least until the enemy used artillery. Some even felt the Rebels “were whipped.” Another, Captain Beattie, believed that if the Rebels “had no artillery [they] could fight them till hell froze over.” Only Maj. 17. Maness, “Ruse That Worked,” 96. 18. OR, 32(1):503, 32(3):733; Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 38; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 238–39. 19. Maness, “Ruse That Worked,” 99; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 103; Hancock, Diary, 346.

Union City

203

Thomas A. Smith and Hawkins felt that if they did not surrender, the Rebels would slaughter every captive. But the council—except for Capt. “BlackHawk” Hays—agreed to surrender under certain conditions. Beattie later testified that those conditions were that the men “should be paroled there, without being taken away from the place and each one allowed to keep his private property, and the officers allowed to keep their fire-arms.” Hays had to go along with the others, but he “did not believe Forrest had any artillery,” and he “wanted them to hold out until [it] was shown.” Another officer—likely the one whose sister had sewn the regiment’s flag—instructed a black man to bury the flag along with a pair of treasured pistols.20 Hawkins returned to meet Duckworth. Together the colonels wrote and signed the final agreement. As Hawkins ordered his soldiers outside the stockade to stack their arms, grays guarded them and entered the fort. Some Rebels and their black “cooks and servants” mocked the bluecoats for believing they had artillery. Now the bluecoats realized that Duckworth had tricked their colonel into surrendering. Captain Gray recalled that “curses loud and deep came from every squad of our boys, whose coolness & bravery had fairly won a victory.” Weeping “like a whipped child,” they cursed Colonel Hawkins, with some vowing they “would never serve under him again as long as they lived.”21 At noon that day, after collecting three hundred horses, five hundred small arms, all of the quartermaster stores he could transport, and providing his prisoners with “a new outfit of clothing,” Duckworth burned the barracks and all remaining supplies. Meanwhile General Brayman traveled with two thousand infantrymen of Brig. Gen. James C. Veatch’s command by boat from Cairo to Columbus, then by train to the burned trestle within six miles of Union City. Here he learned of the surrender and returned to Cairo without any attempt to rescue Hawkins and his men, partly because he felt that it would make little difference and partly because Veatch’s troopers were overdue in reaching Sherman at Chattanooga. Later Brayman reported the surrender unnecessary: “The garrison was within substantial fortification . . . , the enemy had no artillery,” and “had been three times repulsed.” Moreover the Tennesseans were “anxious to fight, and . . . aid was at hand.” Continuing, he criticized the very existence of the outpost, finding such “small posts but 20. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 104; Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 38; OR, 32(1):543–46. 21. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 105; OR, 32(1):544–45.

204

West Tennessee and Beyond

dens for the smugglers, contraband dealers, and [places] convenient for supplying the guerrillas of the interior, and enemies of the public peace.”22 That afternoon out of Union City, enlisted men held captive marched four abreast in a drizzle, guarded on each side by mounted graycoats on the road to Gardner’s Station. Less than a mile down the road, Pvt. Ab Estes, a flag bearer of the 7th Tennessee (CSA), galloped up with the captives’ 7th Tennessee (USA) flag “inverted trailing below” the Rebel’s regimental flag. Notwithstanding their humiliation, John Milton Hubbard of the Confederate regiment thought the prisoners to be “jolly good fellows” who “bore up manfully” in their defeat. He viewed them as having been “molded much after the pattern” of men in his own unit.23 At Trenton locals sold chickens and biscuits to prisoners at exorbitant prices. Forrest’s men escorted a few squads of them at a time into the courthouse, where the guards surreptitiously robbed them of their money. Hawkins protested this violation of his agreement with Duckworth, but he received merely an iff y promise that the money eventually would be returned.24 The first three days out, despite being “paroled on honor,” several of Hawkins’s officers escaped, including his son, Lt. Samuel W. Hawkins of Company I. At Humboldt the detachment escorting them now placed the colonel and other officers under armed guard. Confederates here offered Hawkins a parole, which he refused, choosing to abide by U.S. policy at the time prohibiting exchange of prisoners. One Johnny Reb boasted to Captain Beattie that “they were willing to parole Colonel Hawkins and let him get some horses and arms and then they would come [back] and get them.” En route to Jackson, Forrest, because of the escapes, forced the remaining Union officers “to foot it, in mud ankle deep . . . a mile or so” before allowing them to remount.25 Hawkins found his journey south to be an amalgam of cruelty and kindness. Overnight at Gardner’s Station, Weakley County’s wealthiest planter, John A. Gardner, “treated him with great politeness.” But the following day at Trenton, soldiers robbed him of his clothing, saddlebags, and blanket. That night at Humboldt a brother of Lt. Col. W. D. Lannum, a Confederate severely 22. OR, 32(1):503–4, 509–10, 543–45. 23. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 105, 106, 154; John M. Hubbard, Notes of a Private, Company E, 7th Tennessee Regiment, Forrest’s Cavalry Corps, C.S.A., (Memphis, 1909), 85. 24. Peggy Scott Holley, “The Seventh Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry: West Tennessee Unionists in Andersonville Prison,” WTHSP 42 (1988): 41; OR, 32(1):543. 25. OR, 32(1):543–44; Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 38; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 106–8.

Union City

205

wounded at Union City, treated Hawkins “kindly and gave [him] socks and a handkerchief.”26 While Hawkins was housed in a filthy “guard house with a lot of negroes” at Jackson, three well-to-do Jacksonians offered to post a bond of $100,000 for his release. Their generosity probably reflected the colonel’s prewar popularity in the area. He also received food from two of the town’s ladies. One of the silent unionists residing at Jackson named James McCree “took it upon himself to notify the Federal command on [the] Tennessee River of Forrest being in Jackson with 600 or 700 prisoners and [with a] force [of] not much more.” Forrest ordered a squad to take McCree, viewed locally as “a clever inoffensive man,” across the Forked Deer to be held for execution when he joined them. But several of Jackson’s “best citizens” followed and pled with the general for McCree’s life on the grounds that the offense was all “a mistake.” Forrest freed McCree despite believing that he was guilty.27 In early April near Tupelo, Mississippi, the prisoners boarded a train to Mobile. Once they arrived in Alabama, guards housed them for a few days in a large but crowded “cotton shed” full of blood-sucking “fleas and body lice.” Ten of Hawkins’s men died, some of scurvy and others of unknown causes. Sam Hawkins joined his father at Mobile on April 17. Sam gave the colonel “a glowing account of his adventures” before being recaptured and a gloomy account of his treatment thereafter. Arriving at Montgomery with the others on April 19, they found a “dejected and funeral like appearance” among the citizens. But the newspaper there still had enough Rebel spirit to denounce Colonel Hawkins as a cruel “renegade.”28 The next day prisoners of the 7th traveled east by rail to Columbus, Georgia, and on the Southwestern & Georgia Railroad south to Andersonville, an insignificant station with a nearby unfinished “small wooden church . . . and a dozen houses.” They arrived on April 21, a month after leaving Union City. From here Confederate officials sent Hawkins and his ten commissioned officers on to Macon in the middle of the state, a new place of imprisonment for Union officers. The enlisted men remained at Andersonville’s Camp Sumter, which had “a stockade seventeen feet high . . . , covering an area of sixteen acres and a half” with a stream trickling through it. It was guarded by “boys just large enough to handle a gun [and] old men.” Opened two months earlier, 26. Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 38. 27. Ibid., 39; OR, 32(1):543–45. 28. Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 42–43; Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 39–40.

206

West Tennessee and Beyond

the camp already teemed with 15,000 prisoners, including more than three hundred men of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry, captured at Rogersville in fall 1863. Sgt. Henry M. Davidson, an Ohio inmate, described the newly arrived men of the 7th as “hatless, bootless, and shoeless, without coats, pants and blankets.” Some had “been stripped . . . by their captors,” making them “destitute of . . . dishes.” They had “to bake . . . their [corn]meal and bacon upon stones,” and after eating “go to the brook like beasts to quench their thirst.” For a bed they “scooped out shallow places in the earth with their hands.”29 Six men captured at Union City died during their first full month at Andersonville. Thereafter fatalities rose, reaching a high of 52 in September. Altogether 207 men of the 7th died at Andersonville, more than half of diarrhea (90) and scurvy (74). Others died of dysentery, pneumonia, typhus, or starvation. Pvt. James Taylor wrote that “one man[‘s] food supply for 24 hours was about 1/2 what a man ordinarily has for one meal.” Pvt. Joseph McCracken reportedly weighed only half as much when he left as when he entered the camp weighing 150 pounds.30 During more than two months after arriving, West Tennesseans along with others experienced the bullying, extortion, robbery, and murder of a gang of inmate thugs, numbering about forty and known as the Raiders. In early July an opposition band of prisoners, the Regulators, with the cooperation of the camp’s administrator, Maj. Henry Wirz, corralled the gang and tried and hanged their six leaders. Thereafter, wrote one inmate, “Good order . . . prevailed [and] the men . . . settled . . . to the business of dying.” Still the men of the 7th organized to help each other. For the sick they supplied water and fanned away flies; for those in despair they reminisced of home, sang songs, and told tales; and for those able they strolled with them around the camp.31 Many inmates, including the Tennesseans, became bitter because of Lincoln’s delay in renewing prisoner exchanges. Some twenty 7th Tennessee pris29. TICW, 1:380; Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 43; Henry M. Davidson, “Experience in Rebel Prison for United States Soldiers,” in Prisoners of War and Military Prisons (Cincinnati, 1890), 234; John Ranson and H. S. White cited in Robert E. Denney, Civil War Prisons and Escapes: A Day-byDay Chronicle (New York, 1993), 172, 187; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 15. 30. Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 45–46; TCWVQ, 1:125; The Goodspeed Histories of Carroll, Henry, and Benton Counties (Nashville, 1887), 872. 31. John L. Ransom, Andersonville (Auburn, N.Y., 1881), 105–17; Ezra Hoyt Ripple, Dancing along the Deadline: The Andersonville Memoirs of a Prisoner of the Confederacy, ed. Mark A. Snell (Novato, Calif., 1996), 26–28; Isaac Noah Davenport, “Andersonville Prison and the Steamboat Sultana’s Explosion,” in Gordon Turner, History of Scotts Hill, Tennessee (Southhaven, Miss., 1977), 195–96.

Union City

207

oners took an oath to the Confederacy and joined units fighting in southwestern Georgia. Others were exchanged after the U.S. government rescinded its no-exchanges policy in fall 1864. Most of the Andersonville exchanges went north by way of Atlantic ports. Some rejoined their own regiment under Colonel Hawkins after his exchange in August 1864.32 In Macon Rebel authorities housed Hawkins and other officers in the city jail in a cell measuring “twelve by fifteen feet.” Fortunately the jailor’s wife was a Union woman who “did all she could to make them comfortable.” Other loyal ladies also brought them gifts. But such treatment continued only about a week before guards transferred them to the county jail. Lt. William W. Murray of Company I, a physician before the war, and Lt. John J. Wallace of Company K refused to accept their fate. After “saw[ing] through the floor and [digging] out under the wall,” they escaped. Anticipating that they would be chased with dogs, they devised ways to avoid them. They reached the safety of Union lines in the Florida Panhandle and from there returned to Tennessee.33 From third-story barred windows, Hawkins and others saw trains moving north with supplies and returning “laden with the wounded and the dying” from Atlanta. They also witnessed hundreds of refugees, whites and blacks, coming into the city. On May 18, authorities transferred Hawkins and his officers to a prison camp of about 1,300 officers in the suburbs. For days they lived without shelter until they received lumber to build their own. Each prisoner received “1/3 of a pound of bacon and a pound of corn meal” each day and did his cooking in the open. Conditions were considerably better than at Andersonville, and even some recreation existed. One prisoner at the time wrote: “Our four acres of ground [were] improved by baseball and cricket daily.”34 On June 10, Confederates extracted the fifty highest-ranking U.S. officers at Macon, including a flu-ridden Hawkins, and put them on a train to Charleston, South Carolina. Upon arrival two days later, authorities quartered the prisoners in the city jail for about a week. Then once they signed a pledge not to attempt escape, guards moved them to a frame house near the Ashley River. Although they had the run of the house and could purchase vegetables from 32. Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 49; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 204–5. 33. Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 40; W. W. Murray, “From Macon, Georgia, to the Gulf, an Escaping Prisoner’s Experience,” in MOLLUS, Commandery of Ohio, Sketches of War History of 1861– 1865, 7 vols. (Cincinnati, 1888–1910), 5:88–117. 34. Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 40; Charles Mattocks, “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine, ed. Philip N. Racine (Knoxville, 1994), 148, 151.

208

West Tennessee and Beyond

the local market, Rebel officials exposed them to the fire of U.S. gunboats in a ploy by Maj. Gen. Samuel Jones to end the shelling of the city.35 Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, commander of the Union’s Department of the South, ordered the shelling continued. He contended that the area had a concentration of factories, warehouses, and shipyards for wartime use and that notice had been given to remove noncombatants. He warned Jones that he had asked President Lincoln to have “an equal number of [Confederate] prisoners of like grades” exposed to Rebel shelling. Following a round of communication, both sides agreed to a “Special Exchange” of some officers. On August 3 a group of prisoners, including Hawkins, sailed beyond Fort Sumter and boarded a U.S. ship bound for Union-occupied Hilton Head. Other Tennessee officers remained captives in Columbia, South Carolina, in better locations. Hawkins reached New York on August 9 and the following morning left by rail for Columbus, Kentucky.36 To the colonel’s disappointment he found that he had been the subject of a congressional hearing for his surrender at Union City. He also learned that two of his captains, Parson and Beattie, had been court-martialed on unrelated matters because of charges brought by General Hurlbut. A hard-drinking, corrupt man, Hurlbut had since been relieved at Memphis because of his own “timidity” to come out of the city and fight Forrest in spring 1864. Commenting on all of this, Hawkins optimistically wrote, “All things will come straight in the end.” He continued: “When the other officers come back I intend to put them through for wrong done in my absence,” and swore also to “see that full justice is done Genl Hurlburt [sic].” No evidence exists that he carried out either threat. In the case of his captains, Hawkins probably needed the will; in Hurlbut’s case, the power.37 Hawkins’s regiment never completely ceased to exist. Lieutenant Royal’s Company B had been cut off east of Union City. That unit continued to recruit, and within a few months those exchanged began to return. Detachments performed garrison duty at Paducah and Columbus and scouted in western Kentucky and West Tennessee. As ordered, Union City was never occupied again by the Federals but was “visited frequently by scouting parties and patrols.” Lieutenant Murray, back from his Macon imprisonment, commanded a squad 35. Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 40–41; Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 27, 1864. 36. OR, 35(2):132, 134–35; Petition from Prisoners of War at Columbia, Dec. 23, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC. 37. Lufkin, “Hawkins Family Letter,” 41.

Union City

209

during a skirmish at Union City on September 3, 1864. Detachments chased guerrilla bands as late as May 1865. In June 1865 the regiment left Paducah and was mustered out of the service at Nashville in August.38 Meanwhile from April until November 1864, Hurst’s 6th Tennessee served on guard duty, mostly at Memphis but occasionally at White Station in May; Grand Junction in July; by detachments at Helena, Arkansas, from April to June; and at Shoal Creek, Alabama, in October. General Grierson ordered a detachment commanded by Lt. Francis Tucker of two hundred dismounted men from four companies across the Mississippi to Helena in mid-April to report for temporary duty to Brig. Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, commander of the District of East Arkansas. Buford considered the men “a raw, undisciplined detachment.” In October another detachment of four companies reported briefly to Brig. Gen. James D. Morgan when Forrest threatened the railroads in Middle Tennessee. Along with Morgan they arrived too late to see action following Forrest’s retreat into Mississippi.39 Federally occupied Union City and its capture by Confederates during March 1864 raised several questions among Federal commanders about the value of such weakly defended outposts with little strategic value. Why concentrate on small matters in detail when larger, more significant issues were at hand? Why focus on difficult-to-defend posts along rail routes with vulnerable bridges when water routes were available? Why support political reconciliation when not enough unionists existed around whom to build a nucleus for restoration? Why support unionists through trade when determined irregulars seized much of what was accumulated by the loyalists as well as the weapons and men sent to defend such stockpiles? Why fight the guerrillas if after stealing from the unionists, they ultimately would prey on their own people? Despite such questions, which with rare exception (mainly Union City) the Federals answered “Do not,” problems remained for the unionists and the army. The former wanted protection and enough peace to earn a decent living, which was not to be had outside of Memphis. The army wanted soldiers— after mid-1863 supplied by blacks from the plantation belt—and to stop white enlistment into Confederate forces, impossible with the use of only small patrols and the lack of important posts within the West Tennessee interior. But 38. Ibid. 39. TICW, 1:335–36; 6th Tennessee, CSR.

210

West Tennessee and Beyond

Union generals accepted their tradeoffs in the section and thereby busied perhaps the greatest cavalryman in either army, Nathan Bedford Forrest, from December 1862 to spring 1864 in raising recruits and supplying those enlistees with arms and horses from West Tennessee.

CHAPTER 13 Fort Pillow

B

y August 1863, Indiana officers from Fort Pillow found “hundreds sku[l]king in the woods—in the Counties of Lauderdale—Dyer—Tipton, and Haywood—ready and eager to go in the service” of the Union army. At occupied Union City, attorney William F. Bradford had enlisted a home guard devoted to “driving out guerrillas.” In late September he began recruiting a cavalry regiment under authority from Governor Johnson. General Gillem promised him that the army would feed his recruits and clothe them with uniforms once they were mustered. Bradford enlisted three undermanned companies while Kentuckian Jonathan F. Gregory, a recruiter for Hurst’s 6th Tennessee at Paducah and to whom Bradford promised a captaincy, raised a fourth company, which he took on several scouts. During the winter John L. Poston, a Haywood County farmer, completed the organization of a final company from his home county that was armed but never mustered. Poston’s popular second in command, 1st Lt. Cordy B. Revelle, moonlighted at Fort Pillow in the illicit trafficking of cotton.1 Men in their twenties represented about half of Bradford’s Battalion, with the others about equally divided between those under twenty and over thirty. Most of the soldiers and their officers hailed from Obion, Dyer, Haywood, and Lauderdale, counties in the northwest corner of Tennessee that border 1. David J. Temple and William H. Herron to Johnson, Aug. 11, 1863, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; TICW, 1:353, 426, 432; Ward, River Run Red, 74–75, 215; PAJ, 6:615n; Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Census Office, RG 29, NA; Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; William F. Bradford, Jonathan F. Gregory, John L. Poston, and Cordy B. Revelle, ibid.; Alvan C. Gillem to Bradford, Sept. 23, 1863, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Gillem to Maj. S. Medans, Sept. 23, 1863, ibid.; Gregory to Gillem, Dec. 1, 1863, ibid.; Charles L. Lufkin, “ ‘Not Heard from since Apr. 12, 1864’: The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A.,” THQ 45 (summer 1986): 133–39, 139n.

212

West Tennessee and Beyond

Kentucky and the Mississippi River, and worked small farms to support their families. More than one in ten—some of whom opposed secession—had deserted from the Confederate army. Despite objections from others, three enlisted men from Illinois regiments, Mack J. Leaming, William L. Cleary, and John C. Barr, became lieutenants. The unit never reached beyond battalion level (and it is referred to as Bradford’s Battalion in its Compiled Service Records), nevertheless then and later, it was widely known as the 13th Tennessee Cavalry. Since another 13th Tennessee Cavalry formed in East Tennessee during 1863 and reached regimental strength in 1864, the state changed the West Tennessee regiment’s title in August 1864, five months after the battle at Fort Pillow, to the 14th Tennessee Cavalry.2 In fall 1863 Colonel Waring’s brigade occupied Union City. Waring spelled out the rules for the entire post. In addition to requiring his and Bradford’s men to answer the usual roll calls—three stable calls and two drill calls— Waring forbade them to engage in certain pursuits, including firing weapons except in the line of duty, horse racing (except as he desired), burning wood from the abatis as firewood, or venturing beyond the post for more than two miles. An order in mid-November from General Hurlbut, commanding at Memphis, allowing “detached Brigades . . . to impress . . . able-bodied persons liable to military duty as may be required to fill up the existing Regiments and Batteries” possibly added a few men to Bradford’s Battalion.3 In mid-January 1864 the battalion moved from Union City to Columbus, Kentucky, for Companies C and D to be mustered and mounted. Then joined by Gregory’s Company A, the unit marched in early February to Fort Pillow. On February 21 it received battery support from Lt. Alexander Hunter’s Company D, 2nd U.S. Colored Light Artillery of forty men and two field guns. From the fort Bradford could establish a new, and presumably better, recruiting station, prevent the enemy from threatening tariff on the Mississippi, and provide refuge for fleeing unionists and runaway slaves. Sooy Smith, about to leave on his ill-fated Mississippi expedition, instructed Bradford to continue to flesh out his regiment, supply his needs (especially horses) from the sur2. Ward, River Run Red, 76; Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; Mack J. Leaming, William L. Cleary, and John C. Barr, ibid. Since this work describes both regiments—one of which never reached beyond battalion strength—and the writer wants to avoid reader confusion, the West Tennessee unit will be referred to whenever possible as Bradford’s Battalion. Members of Company A, 13th Tennessee Cavalry to Johnson, Sept. 20, 1864, Johnson Papers, TSLA. 3. TICW, 1:353; Ward, River Run Red, 76, 410n.

Fort Pillow

213

rounding area, and to attack guerrillas. The major’s later scouring of the surrounding countryside probably represented legitimate foraging. If otherwise and Bradford learned of it, violators were arrested. This was the case with Pvt. James M. Christenberg—bigamist, one-time Memphis & Ohio brakeman, and more recently forager for two Illinois infantry regiments—who was confined for leaving his “post of duty [and] committing depredations on citizens.”4 Arkansas Rebels had built a battery on the Tennessee bluff at the bend in the river that in spring 1861 became Fort Pillow, named for Maj. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow of the Provisional Army of Tennessee. Later more than three thousand slaves from the surrounding area constructed a fort covering thirty acres for batteries on the bluff and a four-mile long semicircular outworks. The fort soon became a stopover for graycoats ordered elsewhere. In winter quarters during 1861–62, Confederate troops erected small log cabins for shelter.5 Fort Pillow came under fire from enemy gunboats after mid-April 1862, disturbing its inhabitants’ sleep and occasionally killing a man or a mule, until Confederates evacuated on June 4, having already abandoned most of West Tennessee. The 52nd Indiana Volunteer Infantry occupied the fort from September 1862 to mid-January 1864 while other regiments came and went. After the Indianans mounted two companies from horses in the vicinity, they raided as far as Brownsville, “attacking guerilla bands and conscripting squads.” The Indiana riders, along with companies of the 2nd Illinois Cavalry—detached there for months at a time—curtailed but never completely destroyed such intruders. Nevertheless all was not hostility: “Twelve or thirteen Tennessee boys . . . enlisted in [his] Company,” wrote Cpl. Addison Sleeth of Company G, 52nd Indiana, “and some of [the] old Yankee boys . . . married Dixie girls.”6 Shortly after arriving at Fort Pillow in February 1864, Major Bradford reported that his horsemen had “been on several scouts and captured a number of guerrillas . . . , and lots of contrabands and goods.” But all was not well between Bradford and his men. The major broke his promise to Gregory and 4. OR, 32(2):311; TICW, 1:353; Ward, River Run Red, 76–77, 81–82, 290–91; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 312–13; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 44, 48, 70; James M. Christenberg, Bradford’s Battalion, CSR. 5. West, Tennessee Encyclopedia, 328; Robert C. Mainfort Jr., “A Folk Art Map of Fort Pillow,” WTHSP 40 (1986): 73–74; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis, 1943), 60. 6. Robert Partin, “A Confederate Sergeant’s Report to His Wife during the Bombardment of Fort Pillow,” THQ 15 (Sept. 1956): 243–48, 250, 252; Robert C. Mainfort Jr. and Patricia Coats, “Soldiering at Fort Pillow, 1862–1864: An Excerpt from the Civil War Memoirs of Addison Sleeth,” WTHSP 36 (1982): 72, 77–90; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 68; Lufkin, “ ‘Not Heard from Since,’ ” 147.

214

West Tennessee and Beyond

awarded command of Company A to his brother, attorney Theodorick “Ted” Bradford, a refugee with his family from Dyersburg. This breach of promise caused resentful officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, to resign and other friends of the Kentuckian to desert. On February 23, when Bradford arrested Gregory for encouraging desertion, the former Paducah recruiter drew his pistol but never got off a shot. Bradford shot him in the abdomen, and he died five days later. Thereafter enlistment diminished and desertions increased partly because of Gregory’s death but also as a result of unpaid signing bonuses and unpaid salaries, exacerbating unmet needs of the men’s families, generally located within a one-day ride. Several deserters returned after venturing to Paducah for two to four weeks just in time to be killed on April 12. Others at the fort appeared happy enough, especially John Poston’s brother, Sgt. Wiley G. Poston. He assured his wife of his well-being, satisfaction, and safety and encouraged her to request other volunteers to join him.7 Because of Forrest’s activity in West Tennessee during spring 1864, Hurlbut ordered Maj. Lionel F. Booth in March to take Companies A, B, C, and D of his 6th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, a total of about 250 men composed of blacks from West Tennessee and northern Mississippi, upriver to Fort Pillow. The general felt that the fort’s commanding position allowed it to “be held by a small force against almost any odds.” As senior officer the young abolitionist and native Philadelphian from the regular army would take command. Booth was to confer “fully with Major Bradford . . . , a good officer, though not of much experience.” Moreover Hurlbut ordered him to assemble defenses in the best order possible and cautioned him against allowing any “man whose loyalty [was] questionable” from going “in or out” of the post.8 The general assured Bradford of the sterling quality of Booth and his black artillerists. His duty, wrote Hurlbut, was to hold the “exterior garrison.” If attacked, he and his troopers should “seek refuge in the fortifications.” Bradford, a nonslaveholder, possessed no qualms regarding black troops in the Union army, especially for duty manning batteries. He realized they were available and helpful and that using them deprived the enemy of manpower.9 7. Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 70, 71–72; E. B. French to TAGO, Mar. 3, 1866, TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; Jonathan F. Gregory and Willey G. Poston, ibid.; Ward, River Run Red, 81–82. 8. Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 49–50; OR, 32(1):556; Ward, River Run Red, 128; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 72–73. 9. OR, 32(1):556; Bradford to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1863, Johnson Papers, TSLA.

Fort Pillow

215

As well as engaging his black troops in artillery and infantry drill, Major Booth had them “throwing up rifle-pits,” constructing firing platforms, and making openings in the parapet for firing at close range. Post surgeon Dr. Charles Fitch, who arrived after Booth, reported there being “a double log cabin, used as a Hospital for the white soldiers [and] at the rear, east of the cabin . . . two Hospital Tents [for] colored soldiers.” On March 30, before riding on to Memphis to alert Hurlbut, an escapee from Duckworth’s prisoners, Capt. Thomas P. Gray of Company C, 7th Tennessee, galloped bareback on a horse into Fort Pillow to warn Booth “to be on the lookout” for a possible attack from Forrest. But after having Bradford dispatch scouts to within a few miles of Brownsville, where they captured a handful of Forrest’s cavalrymen, Booth reported to Hurlbut on April 3 that all appeared “quiet with[in] a radius of from 30 to 40 miles around,” slightly out of Forrest’s range, then in Jackson. He felt no fear since the situation was “perfectly safe.”10 Booth defended the fort with about 580 U.S. soldiers: 285 blacks, most with muskets, and a few manning six artillery pieces; and 295 whites armed with carbines and pistols. The battery included two 23-pounders, two 6-pounders, and two 20-pounder Parrott guns. The gunboat New Era, a river ferry strengthened with timbers, stood guard at the fort’s levee with twelve 24-pounder howitzers. James Marshall, its captain, had devised a signal for Booth to have the gunboat fire at the enemy. Unfortunately, as time would tell, because of the high bluff and the long-range shots necessary to fire over the fort, the New Era gave the garrison scant assistance.11 Fifty yards to its north, Coal Creek that flowed into the Mississippi protected the fort. Away from the river bluff, the clay ground sloped toward a semicircular ravine. But the rough terrain possessed an abundance of small hills, hollows, holes, stumps, and logs that could be used for cover, as well as knolls higher than the fortification. Although slaves cleared most of the standing timber and underbrush in 1861, fresh underbrush had appeared by 1863.12 Back in Jackson from his venture into Kentucky—during which he captured towns, horses, and supplies but not men and forts—Forrest was still 10. Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War (New York, 1998), 159– 60; John Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., eds., “Dr. Fitch’s Report on the Fort Pillow Massacre,” THQ 44 (spring 1985): 29; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 74. 11. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Fort Pillow Massacre, 38th Cong., 1st sess. 1864, H. Rpt. 65, 86. 12. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 309–13; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 160.

216

West Tennessee and Beyond

interested in the bounty at Fort Pillow. Although others later mentioned his intention to relieve civilians of depredations, in his official report of April 4, the general simply stated: “At Fort Pillow . . . they have horses and supplies which we need.” On April 10 he ordered General Chalmers—“Little Un” to his men—sixty miles to the west to surround the fort and wait for him. Fearing Hurlbut would reenforce Fort Pillow, Chalmers dispatched two detachments to demonstrate against Memphis. He left Jackson early on April 11 and halted briefly at Brownsville before moving out at midafternoon in a soaking rain on a forty-mile march to Fort Pillow. Chalmers led the combat-tested brigades of Colonel Bell and Colonel McCulloch against inexperienced black and white Federals.13 Chalmers’s guide, W. J. Shaw of Forked Deer Creek, Tennessee, a recent Fort Pillow escapee, knew the fort’s topography and the strength of its force. Through Forrest, Chalmers also had received information from others, including Rebel spies, once at Pillow. In addition, some of his troopers, especially those of Bell’s brigade, hailed from the area. They bitterly resented former neighbors turned Tories and blacks fighting against their owners. Most believed, as Sgt. William Witherspoon wrote, that Bradford’s men did not enlist in the Union army “through any sense of patriotism, but for booty and plunder.” John Milton Hubbard ventured that “those within the fort knew that they deserved . . . punishment because of [their] outrages committed on innocent people.” Some twenty of Bradford’s men who deserted the night before the attack apparently did not believe that they “deserved punishment.”14 Just as the fort’s soldiers rose for roll call at first light on April 12, Chalmers’s advance struck less than a mile from the fort, capturing most of Bradford’s sleepy pickets, driving in the others, and torching the contraband camp, thereby alerting the fort, the barracks, the New Era, and the adjoining hamlet of civilians to the Rebels’ presence. Booth sent out Bradford’s Companies D and E as skirmishers. Sgt. Daniel Stamps—an excellent marksman who farmed a short distance from the fort before enlisting—had his squad retake some picket posts surrounding the fort. Soon he “saw . . . many [Rebels] fall dead from the effects of [their] guns.” Booth ordered his black artillerymen to shell the approaching enemy, and he had Bradford signal Captain Marshall with a 13. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 307, 314; Ward, River Run Red, 148; Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 90–100; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 72, 85. 14. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 126; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 314, 338–39; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 102; Ward, River Run Red, 147.

Fort Pillow

217

flag to direct the artillery fire of the New Era on the enemy at the center of the attack. “So much hurry and confusion” had happened during the first hour of fighting, reported Bradford’s adjutant, Lieutenant Leaming, that no one noticed that the Stars and Stripes was not flying until he ordered it raised. This hoisting of “Old Glory” drew exuberant cheers from the men in the garrison.15 McCulloch’s troops marched on a road running north to the fort, east of the hamlet that had recently arisen with a hotel and stores within sight of the barracks and the corral. Bell’s brigade arrived on a road running directly west from Brownsville and spread itself from the middle of the line to Cold Creek, with Colonel Barteau’s 2nd Tennessee (CSA) on the right. When McCulloch’s graybacks reached a ravine 300 yards from the barracks, Bradford’s skirmishers, except for some sharpshooters, retreated to the main fort before eight o’clock. Only a couple of yards short of entering the fort, 2nd Lt. John C. Barr of Company D received a sharpshooter’s ball to the head and fell back down the slope. Company B, guarding the regiment’s horses, also fled to the fort without the horses. Cognizant of the danger of the barracks falling to the enemy, Booth dispatched Lt. John D. Hill, his battery’s second in command, to burn the buildings located 150 yards south of the fort. But Hill and an unidentified civilian torched only the closest row to the fort before a sharpshooter’s bullet killed Hill and his civilian companion vanished.16 Now a few Rebel sharpshooters reached the other barracks, within accurate shooting distance of the fort. While directing the fort’s battery, Major Booth received a musket ball through his chest, leaving a widow from Ohio named Lizzie in Memphis and Major Bradford in command. Around nine o’clock the bluecoats repulsed a general assault, with heavy loss to the enemy and only minor loss to the garrison except for commissioned officers killed by what Leaming described as “the unerring aim of the rebel sharpshooters.”17 Seeking to reassure his troops, Bradford spoke to his men. You “have done well my boys.” Now “hold out a little longer . . . , a boat is coming with . . . a thousand soldiers.” River traffic moved messages in both directions. The New Era towed a coal barge containing fleeing noncombatants, including women, to above Cold Creek. There they boarded the steamer Liberty bound for Mem15. Lois D. Bejach, “The Journal of a Civil War ‘Commando’: DeWitt Clinton Fort,” WTHSP 2 (1948): 18; OR, 32(1):525, 532, 559, 620. 16. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 315–16; ORN, 26:220. 17. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 316; Ward, River Run Red, 127, 165; Joint Committee, Fort Pillow Massacre, 41.

218

West Tennessee and Beyond

phis. Later arrived the private steamer Olive Branch, sailing out of New Orleans with civilians and 120 artillerymen picked up at Vicksburg. Brig. Gen. George F. Shepley, who was returning from his command in the Crescent City, ordered the ship’s captain to continue north, bypassing the fort. When the Olive Branch reached the New Era, the general did promise to send four hundred rounds of ammunition for the New Era’s artillery once he reached Cairo, Illinois. Bradford expected help from Memphis. But as always, Hurlbut protected himself and his forces by staying put in the city.18 Using the cover of stumps, logs, and ravines, graybacks to the east and north again advanced to within three hundred yards of the garrison by midmorning before Forrest arrived south of the horse corral to take charge. After consulting with Chalmers, the wily commander ordered an increase in sharpshooters and an advance up the slope. He reasoned that “the enemy could not depress their [artillery] pieces so as to rake the slopes, nor could they fire . . . small arms except by . . . exposing themselves to the fire of sharpshooters.” Then followed Forrest’s usual personal reconnaissance—accompanied only by his chief of staff, Maj. Charles W. Anderson—during which he had two horses shot out from under him. Afterward the “badly bruised” general ordered McCulloch to fully occupy the remaining barracks so sharpshooters “could silence the enemy’s artillery.” He also ordered Barteau’s 2nd Tennessee to circle the bluffs of Cold Creek and take cover in the ravine running from the north.19 About eleven o’clock Forrest ordered a general charge that forced all the remaining Federals into the main fortification. To the north Barteau’s men, at some cost in casualties, reached to within seventy-five yards of the enemy. They confronted Sergeant Stamps’s sharpshooters, ordered by Bradford to repulse Barteau’s Rebels approaching below Coal Creek. Stamps believed that he individually struck “one of the enemy [with] every shot.” McCulloch’s sharpshooters occupied the two rows of barracks to the south. Now the graycoats, according to one of their own, had “possession of the field works, wharf, ware houses, stores, groceries, hotel, etc.” of what amounted to “a military town.” By occupying the hamlet near the fort, they acquired “any amount of whis18. Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 52–53, 95–98; OR, 32(1):559; George Nodnia, ed., “Fort Pillow ‘Massacre,’ Observations of a Minnesotan,” Minnesota History 43 (spring 1973): 188. 19. Bejach, “Journal of a Civil War ‘Commando,’ ” 18–19; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 317, 326; Charles W. Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow,” CV 3 (Nov. 1895): 322.

Fort Pillow

219

key,” of which the colonel thought “the enemy inside the fort had plenty” as well. Now the firing slackened.20 Bradford and other Union officers, unaware that the enemy had discontinued the attack due to insufficient ammunition, felt elated for having withstood another assault. Once ammunition wagons arrived two hours later from Brownsville, however, the Rebels resumed a steady fire. Forrest ordered Bell and Barteau to move closer to the fort by running and jumping into the ravines surrounding the bastion. Once they reached them, Forrest felt he could rush the walls without incurring heavy losses. Hoping to achieve his purpose without further bloodshed, the general ordered that bugles sound for a truce and a flag of truce be raised around 3:30 p.m.21 Unaware of Booth’s death, Forrest addressed his usual ultimatum to that officer. It demanded “unconditional surrender,” promised to treat his enemies’ soldiers as “prisoners of war,” and should surrender be refused, declared that he could not be responsible for their fate. Forrest claimed that his soldiers had “received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position [could] easily assault and capture the fort.” Bradford responded, signing Booth’s name to conceal his death, “I respectfully ask for one hour for consultation with my officers and the officers of the gun-boat.”22 Before denying this request for time, Forrest rode near the Mississippi to observe the sight earlier seen by his soldiers: three steamers approaching the fort. Despite the truce the general took precautions against a landing. He ordered Chief of Staff Anderson to take three companies south along the river below the fort and work his way north toward the landing. Simultaneously he directed Barteau to move farther south with two hundred soldiers along the fort’s northern edge to prevent any landing there. Meanwhile the remaining Rebels improved their positions during the truce.23 Believing the enemy wanted to use the hour to receive reinforcements, Forrest replied: “Your request cannot be granted. I will allow you twenty 20. Bejach, “Journal of a Civil War ‘Commando,’ ” 18–19; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 264–65; OR, 32(1):532; C. Fitch, “Capture of Fort Pillow—Vindication of General Chalmers by a Federal Officer,” SHSP 7 (Sept. 1879): 441. 21. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 318–19; Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 323. 22. Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 56; OR, 32(1):560, 596. 23. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 320–21; Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 57; OR, 32(1):561, 570; Ward, River Run Red, 183–85; John C. Carroll, Autobiography and Reminiscence, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 28–29.

220

West Tennessee and Beyond

minutes . . . for consideration; if at the expiration of that time the fort is not surrendered, I shall assault it.” According to Leaming, “after a short consultation . . . , [the] officers . . . unanimously voted not to surrender.” Bradford and the others knew of Colonel Hawkins’s uncalled-for capitulation at Union City and Col. Samuel Hick’s winning resistance at Paducah. Again signing the response “L. F. Booth,” Bradford tersely responded, “I will not surrender.” Asked late in the day after his defeat why he had not surrendered, he replied, “Because [my] name was not Hawkins.”24 Apparently the garrison’s officers thought they could withstand further assaults. They stood behind walls eight foot high and four foot wide, facing a twelve-foot-wide ditch that was at least six feet deep. The spirits of the black soldiers remained high. Lieutenant Leaming reported that they “would put their hats on the bayonets of their guns and hold them up for the confederates to shoot at, and also would make insulting remarks to their former owners.” For all the firepower exhibited, only twenty to twenty-five Federals had been killed and fifteen wounded, all of whom had been removed to hospital tents below the fort on the bluff. Bradford also knew of an alternative plan. If the fort had to be abandoned, troops could retreat orderly and drop down under the bank as Captain Marshall “[gave] the rebels canister.” Along the shore Marshall had anchored two barges that presumably could be used to tow away the garrison’s troops.25 Once the flags of truce came down, all prepared for what would be the final charge. Inside the garrison, cavalry support, including teamsters, farriers, and saddlers, and refugees and sutlers manned a station with a musket. While 250 sharpshooters held down the Federals, partially exposed on the fort’s platforms, Forrest ordered his troopers in the ravines to hold their fire until they got within the walls.26 At four o’clock, upon the general’s command, German bugler Joe Gaus blew the battle charge, and 1,200 men scrambled forward in a crouched position before jumping into a deep and wide ditch parallel to the walls. Then using themselves as “stepping blocks [for] their comrades,” some made the top and reached back for others. They came “as if rising from out [of] the very earth . . . within 20 yards of our works,” wrote Leaming. Suddenly “the front rank, six hundred strong, leaped down among the garrison.” As they flooded across the 24. OR, 32(1):561; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 79. 25. Ward, River Run Red, 169; Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 323. 26. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 324.

Fort Pillow

221

fort’s wall and into the garrison, blueclad blacks and whites “armed with carbines with no bayonets” fled down the bluff toward the river, dodging tents as their flag still flew over the fort.27 Realizing resistance was futile, Bradford shouted, “Boys, save your lives!” Lt. Peter Bischoff of the 6th Heavy Artillery objected, saying to the Tennessean, “Do not let the men leave their pieces; let us fight yet.” Seeing Rebels flooding in from all sides, the major responded: “It is no use anymore.” Bradford and Captain Posten, still untouched, joined the disorganized flight of soldiers and refugees toward the river—some in small groups, others individually; some with guns, others without; most seeking to surrender but receiving no quarter. “Bradford put a white handkerchief on his sword-point and waved it in token of submission,” but it was ignored. To the bluecoats’ “unutterable dismay and confusion,” they received fire on their flanks from forty to one hundred yards as they neared the river: Rebels personally commanded by Anderson had moved closer to the river during the truce. Some bluecoats swam into the river, but the strong current, “swollen by the spring rain . . . carr[ied] away weak and wounded swimmers.” Other “poor wretches,” as one Rebel officer wrote, “jumped into the river, only to be shot in the water which seemed to seethe and boil with bullets.” Meanwhile Marshall, who had moved the New Era offshore because Forrest had turned the fort’s guns on him, could not fire for fear of hitting bluecoats.28 Writing to his sisters two days after the battle, Sgt. Achilles V. Clark of the 20th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) described what he called “a great slaughter pen” in which “poor deluded negro[e]s fell upon their knees and with uplifted hands screamed for mercy only to be . . . ordered to their feet and then shot down.” The graycoats harbored so much hatred for the “home-made Yankees” that they “fared little better.” But some Rebels such as Clark had second thoughts about what was happening and tried to slow “the butchery.” Of the bluecoats running down the bluff, DeWitt Clinton Fort wrote that “the wildest confusion prevailed among them.” Most threw down their arms and “seemed desirous to surrender” as they held their hands above their heads and pled to be taken as prisoners of war. But other bluecoats “carried their guns with them.” 27. Ibid., 325–26; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 327–28; Bodnia, “Fort Pillow,” 188. 28. Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 112; OR, 32(1):567; Ward, River Run Red, 204, 211; T. W. Blount, “Captain Thomas William Blount and His Memoirs,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 39 (July 1935): 1–13; Thomas F. Berry, Four Years with Morgan and Forrest (Oklahoma City, 1914), 271; Cimprich and Mainfort, “Dr. Fitch’s Report,” 31; ORN, 26:224–25; OR, 32(1):609; Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 323.

222

West Tennessee and Beyond

As they ran “they were loading and firing back up the bluff.” He and other Confederates felt they “could only stand there and fire until the last man of them was ready to surrender.”29 Forrest and Chalmers realized the slaughter had metamorphosed into a massacre—though they avoided using the term—and that only minor resistance remained by panicky blueclads striving to survive. They tried to stop the indiscriminate killing and begin the collection of prisoners. Only a few days after the battle, Confederate surgeon Sam Caldwell of the 21st Tennessee Cavalry, who doubtless overheard the wounded Rebels, wrote to his wife that “if the General had not run between our men & the Yanks with his pistol and saber drawn, not a man would have been spared.” Much the same was recalled by a number of black soldiers and by Col. Thomas Berry of the 9th Texas Cavalry, who remembered that Forrest called on others to restrain two gray regiments. When the firing ceased, the general assigned Major Anderson and the fort’s Union provost marshal, Capt. John T. Young, to flag the New Era to land and collect the Federal wounded. But the frightened Captain Marshall sailed north until he rounded a bend.30 Meanwhile reaching the shoreline, Major Bradford, now without hat, coat, or vest, raised his hands above his head and cried in a loud voice that he surrendered. But Confederates to whom he was just another turncoat continued to fire at him as he walked backward into the water and was forced to swim. He swam thirty or so yards in the swift current before returning to shore and being captured while running up the bluff. In consultation with Bradford, General Forrest ordered that “the Federal dead . . . be buried in the trenches of the works, the officers . . . interred separately from their men.” Union details buried whites at the upper end and blacks at the lower.31 Only a few white Union officers—including Booth, who was stripped of his uniform by the Rebels—were interred in individual graves. Forrest allowed 29. Dan E. Pomeroy, ed., “A Letter of Account: Sergeant Clark Tells of the Fort Pillow Massacre,” Civil War Times Illustrated 24 (June 1985): 24–25; Bejach, “Journal of a Civil War ‘Commando,’ ” 19–20. 30. Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 83; Ward, River Run Red, 233; Fitch, “Capture of Fort Pillow,” 441; Dinkins, Furl That Banner, 154; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 440; Berry, With Morgan and Forrest, 271; Caldwell to wife, Apr. 15, 1864, cited in John Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., “Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence about an Old Controversy,” Civil War History 28 (Dec. 1982): 300; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 330. 31. OR, 32(1):557; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 440; Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 524.

Fort Pillow

223

Major Bradford “to supervise the burial of his brother,” Ted, killed that morning. Afterward the Tory commander reported to Colonel McCulloch’s quarters. There he ate with McCulloch and pretended to sleep before escaping into the night. But being caught in civilian clothes on his way to Memphis by a search party from the 7th Tennessee (CSA), he was placed with Colonel Duckworth’s column and other prisoners marching toward Jackson. That day five guards, escorted by two regiments, marched Bradford five miles beyond Brownsville. There the group halted, and the guards, likely with instructions from Duckworth, led Bradford about fifty yards off the road. Although he cried for mercy and pled “to be treated as a prisoner of war,” three of the men shot him, and he died instantly. Their mission accomplished, the trio turned and left the body unburied.32 Meanwhile McCulloch, as ordered, took charge of Fort Pillow, the prisoners and wounded, the burial of the dead, and the seizure of moveable property. Prisoners supervised by their own officers placed the wounded in tents and barracks and buried about 228 of the dead. A detail of graybacks accompanied by Major Anderson collected “two hundred and sixty-nine rifles and six cases of rifle ammunition, all of which were gathered up on the face of the slope from the fort to the water’s edge.” At five o’clock Rebels began riding out of Fort Pillow, guarding about 226 prisoners, 164 white and 61 black. Eventually the white prisoners would arrive at Andersonville, where fewer than a third would survive, while the blacks joined work gangs constructing fortifications at Mobile. By nightfall, still not knowing if more Federals were headed their way from Memphis, the Confederates camped beyond Fort Pillow.33 At dawn the next day, Forrest ordered Captain Anderson and Capt. John T. Young back to the fort to arrange for a passing steamer to take on board the Union wounded. The USS Silver Cloud, commanded by Capt. William Ferguson, arrived at six o’clock and rescued about twenty bluecoats hidden along the riverbank. When its crewmen saw pickets, they “shell[ed] the woods about the fort,” causing the enemy to burn the barracks and tents. But after Anderson raised a white flag, Ferguson ceased firing, and they arranged a truce. Ferguson also hailed the steamer Platt Valley to assist in this operation. Ferguson 32. Joint Committee, Fort Pillow Massacre, 101–3; Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 68–69; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 440–41, 455; Ward, River Run Red, 245, 274–75. 33. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 330; Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 95; Ward, River Run Red, 287; Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 324.

224

West Tennessee and Beyond

found “about 70 wounded men in the fort and around it” and estimated burying “150 bodies.” Anderson and Young completed their work by five o’clock, and the boats sailed up the Mississippi to Illinois.34 Later appealing to southerners, Chalmers wrote that his Confederates welcomed the chance to teach “the mongrel garrison and blacks and renegades a lesson long to be remembered.” In his early report of the battle, Forrest “hoped that” the battle would “demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” But rather than learning lessons, the news of Fort Pillow horrified the North, causing the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to send Sen. Benjamin F. Wade and Rep. Daniel W. Gooch to the South “to inquire into the truth of the rumored slaughter.” During the latter part of April 1864, they interviewed seventy-three individuals at several locations and received thirteen affidavits. Fifty-one of those interviewed were with the garrison during the battle, six were on the New Era, and others arrived at the fort on April 13.35 Of those present at the battle, thirty-five testified that they saw men shot after they tried to surrender, some by officers. Eighteen of twenty-one blacks swore that they were shot after trying to surrender. Some testified to having seen the wounded shot long after the battle ended, even into the next day. Several reported that an inordinate number of those killed had been shot in the head. Many of Bradford’s survivors had received multiple wounds, including Company B’s Pvt. David H. Taylor, who received musket balls in the neck, right shoulder, right chest, left knee, and left thigh—presumably some while lying on the ground. Wade and Gooch interviewed eighteen survivors of Bradford’s Battalion. Their testimony, along with reports filed by a few other members of the battalion, presents a fine summary of events from their viewpoints. In the main they believed that blacks and whites alike fought bravely until the truce, during which Confederates took advantage to advance and better deploy their troops, plunder Bradford’s camp, and place sharpshooters in the deserted barracks. Once the ceasefire ended, the garrison again maintained position for another forty-five minutes until the enemy charged. Blacks on the left side of the Union front panicked and ran toward the bluff as they threw down their guns. Momentarily they were followed by their white comrades, who also threw down their guns as they tried to surrender. Graybacks to their rear 34. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 331; Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 106. 35. OR, 32(1):610, 623; Joint Committee, Fort Pillow Massacre, 1–3.

Fort Pillow

225

and on their flanks “indiscriminate[ly] slaughter[ed]” both groups, as their officers and comrades encouraged them to do. Finally some Tennessean unionists claimed that individual prisoners and some of the wounded were robbed and killed into the day following the battle.36 In August 1864 Governor Johnson consolidated the survivors of the Bradford’s Battalion (14th Tennessee)—two officers and forty men—into Company A under the command of Capt. John L. Poston and authorized him to organize a new battalion. If he failed in this, the company would be merged into another regiment. While Poston spent time recruiting, Lieutenant Cleary led the company as part of the force guarding the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad near Johnsonville. By January 1, 1865, Leaming, now serving in the state adjutant general’s office, reported that Company A was stationed at Tennessee Barracks, just outside of Nashville. Here they shared quarters with the 10th Tennessee Infantry. Capt. Robert H. Clinton, Company F, 10th Tennessee, was the officer in charge of the barracks. On occasion he took detachments of the 14th Tennessee with him as he followed up reports of guerrillas west and south of Nashville, such as into Humphreys County in late January. Clinton led a squad of twenty-five Tennesseans along with forty men from the 13th Indiana Cavalry. While “in the saddle for (8) eight days during the most inclement weather,” a dozen of his men got their feet frozen for the reward of killing one guerrilla.37 Although a few men at Paducah, Johnsonville, and Nashville accepted a $100 bounty to enlist, and a few of the battalion deserters returned, the lone company never reached battalion strength. It was merged into Company E, 6th Tennessee, on February 14, 1865. At least four of the 14th’s officers—including Poston and Leaming—became officers in the 6th, which after March performed garrison duty at Pulaski, herded cattle east of the town, and on one occasion in May hunted for outlaws into Alabama. Meanwhile most of Bradford’s Battalion died at Andersonville, 107 of the 139 imprisoned there. The first man died on May 19, shortly after the Fort Pillow survivors arrived, “nearly starved to death,” bearing tales of the massacre. Many, if not most, of the Tennesseans died of scurvy. According to one of the thirty-two who lived to tell of both 36. Fuchs, Unerring Fire, 106; Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; David H. Taylor, ibid.; OR, 32(1):523–33, 559–65. 37. TICW, 1:394; Poston to Johnson, Jan. 28, 1865, Johnson Papers, TSLA; Members of 14th Tennessee to Johnson, Sept. 20, 1864, ibid.; William Cleary, Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; Robert H. Clinton to Johnson, Jan. 31, 1865, PAJ, 7:448–51; Ward, River Run Red, 410n.

226

West Tennessee and Beyond

Fort Pillow and Andersonville, Pvt. Doctor Z. Alexander, an Obion County farmer, only a few “returned from prison and not but three able to doo eny [army] duty.”38 Sherman viewed the Fort Pillow massacre as the “first fruits of the system of trading posts designed to assist the loyal people of the interior.” He had concluded long before that all such outposts offered the Rebels “tempting chances for plunder.” But to unionists in the ranks, the evacuation of West Tennessee meant a lack of protection as well as starvation for their family and friends. Residents there could not sell their crops and had much of what they produced destroyed by the enemy. They were still subject to Confederate conscription, and as Hurst put it, “Rebels are allowed to float at large, Sacking, burning, and plundering.” Unionists pled for food, especially for widows, but the army denied them such aid because “[u]nder present military regulations family supplies of no kind can be shipped to West Tenn.” Finally a number of regional leaders not in the military had fled to Memphis or Paducah. In September 1864 those from Haywood County residing in Memphis petitioned Governor Johnson to bring the remainder of West Tennessee within the lines of occupation, actually a matter over which the governor had little if any control.39 The most significant question about Fort Pillow’s Tories was why the Rebels killed and wounded so many of them unnecessarily. Broadly speaking, Rebels detested Tories for refusing to pay the same cost that they paid in defending the state and for being unwilling to answer the South’s call to arms by volunteering or accepting conscription. While in East Tennessee Confederates loathed neighbors leaving to fight for the Union, in other parts of the state they objected to loyalists remaining to fight for the blue while they themselves had to leave to fight for the South. Graybacks perceived them also as lower-class residents of the hills and backwaters. Possessing less than did their neighbors, they felt they took advantage of their Yankee uniforms to steal their most prosperous neighbors’ property. Rebels deplored some for having deserted the Confederate army early while they stayed and fought. 38. TICW, 1:333, 338; Bradford’s Battalion, CSR; Ward, River Run Red, 288–91; John Ransom quoted in Denny, Civil War Prisons, 205. 39. Sherman quoted in Ward, River Run Red, 304; Hurst to Johnson, Apr. 29, 1864, PAJ, 6:686; Alvin Hawkins to Johnson, Nov. 17, 1864, ibid., 7:296–97; William K. Hall to Johnson, Dec. 19, 1864, ibid., 342–43; Isaac R. Hawkins to Johnson, Dec. 22, 1864, ibid., 348–49; Russell Fowler, “Chancellor William Macon Smith and Judicial Reconstruction: A Study of Tyranny and Integrity,” WTHSP 48 (1994): 36–39, 42–43.

Fort Pillow

227

Tories in West Tennessee included troopers that scoured the countryside east of Fort Pillow, home of many of the gray troopers. By slaughtering them, Confederates would teach other unionists the ultimate lesson and end a dire situation for area inhabitants. Besides, the Tories of Fort Pillow had committed the sin of joining with blacks to fight fellow southerners. Once the battle commenced, other happenings encouraged the massacre that stemmed from the Rebels’ hatred and circumstances in West Tennessee: failure of leadership on each side to control its own soldiers, pandemonium, excessive drinking, and victimization.

PART 4

The Atlanta Campaign

”I cannot speak too highly of the bravery, endurance, perseverance and patience of the Tennessee cavalry regiments. With proper discipline they could not be excelled by any troops.” Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy

Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 14

North of Atlanta

A

s part of Col. Joseph B. Dorr’s First Brigade (1st Tennessee, 2nd Michigan, and 8th Iowa) of McCook’s division, James Brownlow’s regiment guarded Sherman’s flanks during the march to Atlanta from May to July 1864. In what seemed to be one continuous skirmish, his boys fought at such places as Varnell’s Station, Cassville, Acworth, and Lost Mountain. Meshack Stephens’s 4th Tennessee entered the Atlanta Campaign in mid-July by way of General Rousseau’s Alabama raid from Decatur to Opelika. Later that month both regiments rode in McCook’s ill-fated raid below Atlanta.1 Sherman, Grant’s replacement for heading the Military Division of the Mississippi, led three armies ably commanded by Maj. Gens. George Thomas of the Army of the Cumberland, John M. Schofield of the Army of the Ohio, and James B. McPherson of the Army of the Tennessee. After the fighting in fall 1863, the first two armies had remained at Chattanooga, while Schofield’s army remained at Knoxville. “Uncle Billy,” as his men called him, commanded 100,000 soldiers, including more than 12,000 cavalrymen in four divisions commanded by Brig. Gens. McCook, Kenner Garrard, H. Judson Kilpatrick, and George Stoneman, all directly under Sherman’s command. One division composed of Tennesseans under General Gillem assisted in guarding railroad supply lines in to and out of Nashville. Sherman had reservations about his cavalry commanders, as he did toward all cavalry officers.2 The new Federal commander of the three armies faced Bragg’s replacement, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and his Army of Tennessee, wintering at Dal1. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, xi, xiv; TICW, 1:320, 328. 2. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:15; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:459; Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln, Neb., 2000), 35.

232

The Atlanta Campaign

ton, Georgia, since November 1863. By mid-May 1864, bolstered by the arrival of additional troops from Mississippi, Johnston had 67,000 troops in three infantry corps under Lt. Gens. William J. Hardee, John B. Hood, and Leonidas Polk and Wheeler’s cavalry corps of two divisions (together totaling 8,500 troopers). Grant instructed Sherman “to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” As requested, Sherman submitted a brief plan for the initial phase of his campaign. First he would bring forward supplies by maintaining exclusive control over the railroads. Then with cavalry on the flanks, McPherson would march on the right, Thomas in the center directly toward Johnston, and Schofield on the left. Sherman was convinced that “Johnston [would] be compelled to hang on to [the] railroad, [his] only possible avenue of supply.”3 Sherman insisted on “cavalry being massed on [his] flanks and rear.” Beyond this, he expected his cavalry to scout, escort wagon trains, provide couriers, and when directed, demonstrate against the enemy. Early in the campaign he had one division on each flank, one to the back guarding the railroad, and held one in reserve. Otherwise Sherman’s use of cavalry—as well as of infantry and artillery—depended on the terrain, the route of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, and the movement of Johnston’s army. The only raid that he specified early was against the railroad from Montgomery to Atlanta. Later he would turn to other cavalry raids. The general doubted the boldness of cavalry and its officers. Expressing this opinion to Garrard, he wrote: “I do wish to inspire all cavalry with my conviction that caution and prudence should be but a very small element in their characters.”4 Perhaps no one more succinctly described the Atlanta Campaign up to the time that President Davis replaced Johnston with Hood in front of Atlanta than Col. Charles H. Olmstead of the 57th Georgia Infantry. “The same tactics were repeated over and over again,” he wrote. “Johnston would select a line straddling the Western and Atlanta Railroad and fortify it with care.” Sherman, with greater numbers, would “cover . . . his opponents entire front and . . . send a corps Southward on one or both of [Johnston’s] flanks.” This forced “Johnston’s retreat to a new position . . . but . . . always with a firm front 3. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:26–30; B. H. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (New York, 1929), 234–35; B&L, 4:260, 281–83, 289–92. 4. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:455, 457; Sherman, Memoirs, 2:28; McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 35; James L. McDonough and James P. Jones, War So Terrible: Sherman and Atlanta (New York, 1987), 98.

North of Atlanta

233

and without the slightest loss of war material.” On occasion “Sherman would vary the performance . . . by a savage assault [but] he invariably met with bloody repulse.”5 McCook’s cavalry rode in a five-mile-long column in advance of Schofield’s army, which had traveled by rail from Knoxville to Red Clay, Tennessee. Then it marched southwest down the old Federal Road from the one-time site of a Cherokee council toward Catoosa Springs, “a sort of Saratoga in the South.” In keeping with Sherman’s order, the cavalry traveled without “tents or baggage,” only “one change of clothing,” and were allowed rations of “five days’ bacon, twenty days’ bread, and thirty days’ salt, sugar, and coffee.” McCook’s three brigades (Dorr’s First, Colonel LaGrange’s Second, and Col. Louis D. Watkins’s Third) faced only skirmishers and fallen trees on the road. On May 4 the cavalry made camp within sight of the three-story hotel at Catoosa Springs, and Watkins’s brigade of Kentucky mounted infantry was detached to guard Sherman’s supply line from Chattanooga.6 On May 7 McCook, hoping to deceive Johnston about Sherman’s movements, demonstrated toward the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad. LaGrange, in the advance, occupied Varnell’s Station while Dorr and Lilly’s battery defended the road back toward Catoosa Springs. From Varnell’s Station LaGrange moved south until he confronted a combination of infantry, cavalry, and artillery concentrated on “conical shaped” Potato Hill. Being outnumbered and facing “a strong natural position, strongly fortified,” he fell back that afternoon and requested support. Meanwhile Dorr’s brigade occupied Varnell’s Station, and Brownlow rode forward to help LaGrange. McCook reported that “the first line of enemy’s breast-work [was] taken by the First Tennessee regiment, under Colonel Brownlow” before heavy fire forced its withdrawal.7 Continuing to demonstrate as ordered, the next day McCook’s cavalry rode down Potato Hill valley for three miles toward Dalton. One of Lilly’s artillerymen, Henry Campbell, described “the face of the country [as] unusually rough, consisting of several ranges of high hills running north & south with [a] nar5. Charles H. Olmstead, The Memoirs of Charles H. Olmstead, ed. Lilla Mills Hawes (Savannah, 1964), 138–39. 6. Jacob Cox, Atlanta (New York, 1882), 33; Carter, First Regiment, 152; Benjamin T. Smith cited in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence, Kan., 1992), 125; Jim Miles, Fields of Glory: A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West, the Atlanta Campaign, 1864 (Nashville, 1989), 24, 40. 7. OR, 38(2):750, 766; DuBose, Wheeler, 286, 330.

234

The Atlanta Campaign

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Georgia

row valleys about 500 yds wide between them.” Another Yankee recorded that “the country was mostly wooded and there were few farms; the houses were chiefly log cabins and the people [he] saw looked poor.”8 On May 9, as ordered by Schofield, McCook had LaGrange’s brigade move south on the Dalton Road and feign an attack on the enemy, then seek to hold his position. When Wheeler’s advance struck LaGrange’s 1,100-man force, the colonel pursued the Rebels for ten miles to Poplar Place, a crossroads with a hill. Here additional cavalry, two infantry brigades, and a battery blocked LaGrange’s path. Because of the hilly, wooded terrain, his troopers dismounted and every fourth man held the horses. Lacking artillery support, they pushed forward and skirmished for four hours. Finally the graybacks overwhelmed the 8. OR, 38(2):751; Rice C. Bull, Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull, 123rd New York Volunteer Infantry, ed. K. Jack Bauer (San Rafael, Calif., 1977), 103.

North of Atlanta

235

Federals, wounded and captured LaGrange, and inflicted a loss of 147 men before the survivors remounted and fell back.9 That same day, while the fog lifted, Schofield’s and Thomas’s infantry formed a line of battle in Crow Valley in front of Dalton. In a series of Union assaults, the Confederates inflicted 800 casualties. Meanwhile McPherson’s army, as ordered by Sherman, marched west beyond eight-hundred-foot Rocky Face Ridge and followed it south to enter unguarded Snake Creek Gap west of Resaca along the railroad. Other commands followed, leaving only Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s IV Corps and Stoneman’s cavalry at Crow Valley.10 On May 11 McCook’s cavalry passed through Tunnel Hill on the Western & Atlantic Railroad north of Dalton and marched west of Rocky Face to narrow Dug Gap, described by one grayback as “really no gap at all” but rather “a deep cut across the top” of the mountain “to make a wagon road.” There, midway to Resaca, McCook relieved Brig. Gen. John W. Geary’s infantry corps, which had been stymied by 250 Rebels rolling boulders off the mountain into the gap and onto the Yankees.11 As the Rebels abandoned Dalton and Dug Gap for Resaca two days later, McCook moved up and through the gap on the narrow road made more precarious and less navigable by the boulders. East of there McCook joined Stoneman moving south. Together their commands guarded Howard’s flanks. The Union cavalry was delayed only by “barricades of rails and logs” thrown up along the road about every three hundred yards. After riding only six miles, they skirmished an hour with Wheeler’s rearguard moving toward Resaca to join Johnston. The next day they skirmished again at Tilton, midway between Dalton and Resaca. One blue cavalryman later recalled that at Tilton he “learned what a half bushel of bullets thrown at you in a cluster sounds like.”12 Sherman’s army concentrated west of Resaca in Sugar Valley on May 13. By that afternoon his infantry had formed along the tree-lined hills near the elbow of Camp Creek, west and north of the enemy entrenchments. Here they dug in for the night. Skirmishers began firing at sunrise, but neither side attempted an assault until midmorning. When McCook’s cavalrymen reached 9. Cox, Atlanta, 38–39; DuBose, Wheeler, 285–86, 330; Carter, First Regiment, 153. 10. Carter, First Regiment, 153; Sherman, Memoirs, 2:32–33; William R. Scaife, The Campaign for Atlanta (Atlanta, 1985), 9; Castel, Decision in the West, 153; Cox, Atlanta, 37–38. 11. OR, 38(2):766; William E. Sloan Diary, Feb. 24, 1864, TSLA. 12. Homer Mead, The Eighth Iowa Cavalry in the Civil War: Autobiography and Recollections of Homer Mead, M.D. (Carthage, Ill., [1925]), 12.

236

The Atlanta Campaign

Resaca—a railroad village with a few wooden buildings—some, as ordered, dismounted to fight in the rifle pits. Others, including Brownlow’s 1st Tennessee, covered the army’s left flank. On May 14 McCook reported a loss of forty killed and wounded: heavy casualties for cavalry.13 In the infantry charge of Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox’s division on May 14, the 3rd and 5th Tennessee Infantry each lost about one-third of its troops. Although the overall assault failed by midafternoon, the Federals wheeled up sufficient artillery along the upper reaches of Camp Creek to level the enemy’s embankment. On the fifteenth Sherman concentrated on his right flank. Before the day ended, Johnston launched a costly counterattack that failed with heavy losses. About midnight—outflanked, outnumbered, and with his back to the Conasauga River—the Rebel commander ordered his army south.14 Now the campaign moved into the less mountainous terrain between the Oostanaula and Etowah rivers. From north to south for about thirty miles, the area had lightly settled valley farmland and a few small towns. Johnston fell back from Calhoun to Adairsville to Cassville. Continuing his earlier formation, Sherman sent McPherson to the west, Thomas in the middle toward Kingston, and Schofield east toward Cassville, hoping to flank the Confederates out of Kingston. But Johnston instead concentrated at Cassville, a small town of culture and commerce. Here he intended to strike Sherman’s left flank as the Federals moved south.15 Covering the left of Schofield’s army on May 19, McCook’s cavalry rode east of Cassville. With the 1st Tennessee in the advance, it wheeled west and got within four miles of the town before Brownlow blundered into Confederates. But luckily the enemy overestimated McCook’s force and mistakenly thought that the dismounted bluecoats were infantry. The Rebels slowly retreated toward Cassville, where Johnston’s main force occupied “an excellent position along the ridge immediately south . . . , [with] an elevated and open valley in front, and a deep one in rear of it.”16 Moving forward, Brownlow’s Tennesseans captured prisoners before drawing heavy fire and taking casualties. Unfortunately McCook arrived too soon— “10 miles ahead” of the infantry—to take on a major army. But his approach 13. McDonough and Jones, War So Terrible, 112. 14. Cox, Atlanta, 47–48. 15. Castel, Decision in the West, 202–7; Cox, Atlanta, 49–53; B&L, 4:303; Bull, Soldiering, 112. 16. B&L, 4:305; OR, 38(2):766; Carter, First Regiment, 153–54; Stephen Davis, Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (Wilmington, Del., 2001), 55.

North of Atlanta

237

did allow Schofield time to place forty guns north of the town, start an artillery duel, and bring up infantry. Meanwhile Union batteries and infantry penetrated into the forests east of Cassville. General Stanley, now commanding infantry, pushed his division forward. McCook’s dismounted cavalrymen followed Stanley’s foot soldiers in taking the first two gray lines of defense. Now it appeared to some of Johnston’s commanders that they faced an untenable position, outflanked and with their backs to a valley. Despite his own inclination to allow an attack, Johnston accepted the advice of Hood and Polk to retreat across the Etowah River.17 Stanley’s infantry occupied the deserted little town, proud home of Cassville Female Seminary and Cherokee Baptist College, both now military hospitals. The hometown of Confederate congressman Warren Akin had “four churches . . . , [a] courthouse, many stores and at least one hundred [wartime] residences, some . . . quite pretentious.” But most of the townsfolk had been evacuated earlier by Johnston. The Federals ate what the Rebels had left and stole what they overlooked. To their own tastes, some amused themselves by donning female attire, others happily read books at desks in the seminary’s library, and McCook’s cavalry and artillery rested at a nearby plantation. There they had found one thousand bushels of corn, enough to feed the horses that night and the next morning.18 On May 20 McCook moved his men to the railroad at Kingston. There they rested, having been “in the saddle from eighteen to twenty hours a day since the opening of the campaign.” Sherman’s force waited three days for railroad tracks to be repaired to get supplies. Then the campaign unfolded between the Etowah and Chattahoochee rivers with a chain of mountains moving from east to west; Sherman, who had known the area in his early army days, called it “submountainous.” The Federals crossed the Etowah on May 24 and moved toward Dallas, twenty miles east of Marietta on the railroad. Riding ahead on the left near the road from Allatoona to Dallas, McCook’s troopers captured about seventy of Wheeler’s cavalrymen near Burnt Hickory. Brownlow’s men captured a courier with a valuable dispatch from Johnston to Brig. Gen. 17. S. Davis, Atlanta Will Fall, 54; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 198–200; OR, 38(3):616; Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, Directed during the Late War between the States (New York, 1874), 323–24; John S. Jackman, Diary of a Confederate Soldier: John S. Jackman of the Orphan Brigade, ed. William C. Davis (Columbia, S.C., 1990), 128. 18. Lee Kennett, Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign (New York, 1995), 84; Miles, Fields of Glory, 77–78.

238

The Atlanta Campaign

William H. Jackson, commanding one of Wheeler’s divisions, informing him that the army was moving toward Dallas.19 Seeing his movement to the west blocked during late May in battles at New Hope Church, Pumpkin Vine Creek, and Pickett’s Mill, Sherman shifted east by way of Big Shanty (Kennesaw) toward the railroad at Marietta. He placed McPherson on the left, Thomas in the center, and Schofield on the right. Up until May 25 the weather was pleasant, “dry and dusty,” making for “easy traveling,” recorded one Yankee. Now it rained almost every day for three weeks, spoiling the soldier’s day and troubling his night.20 McCook’s division guarded the railroad below Acworth and scouted northeast of Sherman’s line of battle. McCook feared that a break in his cavalry’s line would provide the enemy access to the Federal supply trains and the infantry’s rear. Brownlow, operating as a detachment, requested infantry support from Brig. Gen. John H. King of Thomas’s command, stationed nearby. But King denied the appeal under any circumstances. McCook resented the “one-sided affair” of having to cover the infantry’s flank. “If they are attacked,” he complained, “I am to pitch in, while, if I [am] attacked by a superior force I can expect no assistance.”21 By now McCook’s horses were “absolutely dying of starvation” for want of fodder, the availability of which in the countryside Sherman had underestimated. “Five [horses] from one company,” McCook wrote, “dropped on picket this morning, totally exhausted for want of something to eat.” His cavalry had been feeding their mounts “green wheat and leaves, the only food” they could obtain. Those “neither strengthen[ed] nor nourish[ed] them.” To make matters worse, the men themselves were on “half rations.”22 After receiving artillery fire from a high hill at Acworth on May 28, McCook sent Brownlow to take the battery. His men fought for much of the morning before the young colonel captured the hill. Rebels tried to retake it during the night, but the Tennesseans repulsed them without any assistance. On the morning of May 30, Lilly’s 1st Section of artillery twisted its way up 19. OR, 38(4):480–81, 38(5):123; Cox, Atlanta, 66–71, 76–77; B&L, 4:306; Carter, First Regiment, 154. 20. John E. McKay, “Atlanta Campaign,” in Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 5 vols. (New York, 2000), 1:137; Bull, Soldiering, 121. 21. OR, 38(2):753–54. 22. Ibid., 38(4):387; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 65.

North of Atlanta

239

the hill under fire from sharpshooters. After erecting barricades at the summit, the artillerymen lobbed shells at the enemy skirmish line. Because of the Tennessee colonel’s “skill and courage” in taking and defending the hill, the Union army called it “Brownlow’s Hill.” While James Brownlow captured a hill in Georgia, his father, Parson Brownlow, rode a train to Baltimore and the national Republican convention to nominate an old political enemy, Andrew Johnson, now engaged with him in a common cause, for vice president of the United States.23 When U.S. engineers and their crews completed the bridge over the Etowah and locomotives churned south, soldiers on both sides heard trains whistle. During a lull, wrote Sergeant Carter of the 1st Tennessee, the graybacks would shout, “There comes your hardtack, Yank.” When locomotives were heard behind enemy lines, then the Yanks would yell, “Here comes your cornmeal, Johnny.” Carter found this “bit of pleasantry” by soldiers an “agreeable change from the pop-pop of the rifle on the skirmish line.”24 On June 15 Sherman ordered a forward movement against the enemy north of Marietta. The Rebels were entrenched in a number of fortified mountains held together by lines of breastworks, running northeast of Lost Mountain to Pine Mountain, then southeast to the railroad. While guarding Schofield’s left, McCook’s cavalry drove graycoats from the east side of Lost Mountain—a cone-shaped, six-hundred-foot-high dome rising eight miles from any other mountain. Confederates had a battery on its summit and a network of barricades wrapping around it manned by Brig. Gen. Lawrence S. “Sul” Ross’s Texas cavalrymen.25 In a skirmish that cost Brownlow seven men, the 1st Tennessee and the 4th Indiana penetrated the barricades on the west side of the mountain. This enabled Lilly’s battery to secure a position to open fire on the position atop the mountain. Then other units of McCook’s cavalry and artillery reached the rear of the mountain. On June 17 Ross evacuated his men. McCook’s cavalry and Lilly’s artillery occupied the mountain and remained there until the end of 23. Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 202–3; Carter, First Regiment, 155–56; Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions . . . (Minneapolis, 1893), 192, 203; OR, 38(2):702, 801. 24. Carter, First Regiment, 157. 25. OR, 38(2):756; Lucius W. Barber, Army Memoirs of Lucius W. Barber, Company “D,” 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Chicago, 1894), 150; Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1971), 357.

240

The Atlanta Campaign

June in support of a signal station established to relay information from Schofield to Sherman.26 On the twenty-seventh Sherman ordered McPherson’s army to attack the Confederate center at Kennesaw, Thomas to siphon strength from the enemy’s center by attacking south of Dallas Road, and Schofield to feint south of Kolb farm, site of a costly enemy counterattack a week later. The Rebels repulsed McPherson and Thomas with heavy losses, but Schofield got men and artillery between the enemy position and the Chattahoochee River, its “banks low and approachable” and its stream “fordable in many places.” This caused Johnston to begin withdrawing across the river.27 Finding the Chattahoochee’s ferryboats destroyed, nearby fords impassable, and its banks guarded by rifle pits, Sherman had Schofield’s men move up the river to Powers Ferry in search of places to cross. On July 7 Colonel Dorr ordered Brownlow to occupy a wooded island in the Chattahoochee above Powers Ferry and from there cross to the other side. After taking the island with ease, the Tennesseans retreated under heavy fire while attempting to reach the opposite bank.28 After returning from the island, Brownlow’s regiment picketed the west bank for a mile from Powers Ferry to Cochran’s Ferry. “Here,” wrote Brownlow, “the river is very shallow and we have to be on the alert night and day.” But he found the location untouched by the enemy. Compared to recent times of half rations, the regiment lived off the “fat of the land, [having] potatoes, berries, honey, and chickens for nearly every meal.” They also had available “five large fish-traps in this ford [and] an abundance of fish,” accessed by them “under cover of night.”29 But life soon changed. On July 9 Dorr instructed Brownlow to determine the enemy’s strength on the east side of the river at Cochran’s Ford below Soap Creek. Brownlow’s men arrived at 3:00 a.m. but could not ford. At sunrise they spied about thirty Rebels on the other side and this time attempted to ford the river astride their horses. Much to Dorr’s displeasure they returned after “floundering and wallowing” in the rapid current while bullets pattered 26. Carter, First Regiment, 164–66; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 205–7. 27. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:60–62. 28. Carter, First Regiment, 168; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 17. 29. Richard M. McMurry, ed., “More of ‘Raw Courage,’ ” Civil War Times Illustrated (Oct. 1975): 37.

North of Atlanta

241

in the water. Dorr now gave Brownlow “peremptory orders to move at once on the enemy” and reportedly threatened him “unnecessar[ily].”30 While in “a truly ‘fighting-mad’ frame of mind,” but still sufficiently cool to avoid a direct charge, Brownlow summoned Capt. Moses Wiley of Company A. To divert the enemy’s attention, he ordered an astonished Wiley to have two companies strip naked and charge toward the ford firing. But before a large crossing occurred, Brownlow hoped to cross and attack the enemy from the rear with his squad.31 Colonel Brownlow privately summoned nine of his best-swimming troopers, then said: “Boys, we are going to cross that river. It is plain we can’t ford it here, and as we have no pontoons, and can’t very well make a swimming charge, we’ll find another way or break the breeching.” So having his naked companies ready in the bushes to charge into the water and keep up “an incessant fire . . . to divert” enemy attention, Brownlow led his small band upstream almost a mile. There they tied two logs together to make a raft on which to lay “their carbines, cartridge-boxes and belts.” Then they stripped naked, leaving their “hats, boots, and clothing” on the riverbank. One soldier jocularly said: “I reckon the rebs will climb them trees when they find out we’re a lot of East Tennessee bear hunters.” Brownlow cautioned, “Talk low, talk low!”32 While swimming, these Tennesseans pushed their raft ahead of them and reached the east bank undetected. Leaving one man to guard the raft, the others put on their belts, attached their cartridge boxes and crept low as they walked toward the Rebels. As sharp stones cut their feet, cedar brush scratched their flesh, and insects stung their nude bodies, the men uttered “vigorous profanity.” Brownlow, a preacher’s boy, admitted “the occasion [was] worthy of considerable profanity,” but he insisted that they “cuss low, cuss low!”33 The naked warriors remained unseen until within about fifty yards of the graycoats. Then with a yell they fired their carbines and ran toward the temporarily nonplussed enemy, capturing twelve men and two boats. One captured 30. Carter, First Regiment, 168–69. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 170–71; McMurry, “More of ‘Raw Courage,’ ” 37; Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 13, 1864, 525; OR, 39(5):95–96; Knoxville Tri-Weekly Whig and Rebel Ventilator, July 29, 1864; McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 117. 33. Carter, First Regiment, 71; McMurry, “More of ‘Raw Courage,’ ” 37; Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 13, 1864, 525; OR, 38(5):95–96; Knoxville Tri-Weekly Whig and Rebel Ventilator, July 29, 1864.

242

The Atlanta Campaign

Rebel declared, “If we had taken you,” the Confederate government “ud hung you all for spies, as you hain’t got no uniforms on.” McCook reported on July 9 that “Brownlow performed one of his characteristic feats to-day.” It was “one of the funniest sights of the war.”34 Other crossings for days caused Johnston to retreat along the south bank of Peachtree Creek, five miles from Atlanta. On July 11 Sherman ordered McPherson east toward Decatur to cut the Georgia Railroad from Augusta, Thomas south toward Peachtree Creek, and Schofield north toward Buckhead. Having stomached all he could of Johnston’s strategy of retreat, Jefferson Davis replaced him on July 17 with General Hood.35 During the week following Brownlow’s temporary crossing, McCook’s cavalry escorted a supply train forward. On July 11 he encamped near Marietta and the plantation of William King. Here, according to King, the general had two men with the supply train guilty of committing depredations on a slave’s cabin “placed in irons and sent to the front for trial and punishment.” Seemingly with scant surprise to the planter, the Federals left him without fences, chickens, and hogs but with the lingering stench of burning horse carcasses. King felt that all this and worse was “the unavoidable results of war.”36 On July 15 McCook moved to Vining’s Station on the Western & Atlantic Railroad to patrol the river from Pace’s Ferry to Turner’s Ferry. Three days later Col. John T. Croxton’s recently mounted 4th Kentucky Infantry—a 550man-strong, well-mounted, and well-armed regiment—arrived at Vining’s to replace the 2nd Michigan Cavalry, whose three-year term of enlistment ended in June. Because of the seniority of his commission, Croxton, a Yale graduate and antislavery Republican whom the Tennesseans would eventually adore, replaced Dorr as commander of McCook’s First Brigade. Now McCook’s small division numbered 1,500 men, slightly more than a standard cavalry regiment of 1,200 men, if such a unit existed by now.37 McCook’s division crossed the Chattahoochee on July 22 at Pace’s Ferry over a newly completed trestle bridge. It was assigned to help cover the right 34. Carter, First Regiment, 171–72; Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 13, 1864, 525; OR, 38(5):95–96; Knoxville Tri-Weekly Whig and Rebel Ventilator, July 29, 1864; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 27. 35. McKay, “Atlanta Campaign,” 140. 36. William King Diary, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 37. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 197; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 212; Thomas Speed, R. M. Kelley, and Alfred Pirtle, The Union Regiments of Kentucky, 3 vols. (Louisville, 1897), 1:72, 2:310.

North of Atlanta

243

flank of Sherman’s army as it advanced. Early the next morning McCook reached Mayson’s Church on Turner’s Ferry Road and there established communication with Thomas’s right wing. McCook sent out a foraging detail for fodder while his other troopers threw up breastworks and positioned themselves around the church. Just as the detail of horses overloaded with cornstalks returned within sight of the church, a hundred or so Rebel horsemen surprised it and a few pickets, driving them into camp.38 The bluecoats were doing a little of everything—especially fortifying the location and cooking supper—except standing guard. Croxton’s brigade, farther up the road toward the river, had time to mount and defend the battery, which opened fire once the road was cleared of fleeing bluecoats. Brownlow’s regiment repulsed the enemy but captured only two Rebels.39 Just two days later an almost identical affair occurred when an Indiana foraging party started its return to camp and was attacked by two companies of the 9th Texas Cavalry. This time the pursuers punched through Croxton’s pickets and rode into the camp of the 4th Kentucky. Some reached within two hundred yards of McCook’s breastworks before the battery opened up on them with canister. Unable to corral all the bluecoats near the church—some of whom fell to the ground and refused to move—Rebels shot a few in the back and rode away with four prisoners.40 Following the East Tennessee Campaign, Brownlow’s 1st Tennessee continued to prove itself in the march to Atlanta during spring 1864. Although McCook’s division witnessed a setback at Varnell’s Station, with the loss of 140 troopers and the capture of Colonel LaGrange, Brownlow’s men fought valiantly there and at Resaca, where the division lost another 40 men. Riding in the advance before Cassville, Brownlow’s troopers surprised General Johnston’s army and, along with others, bought time for the positioning of Yankee artillery. Riding south on May 24, the Tennessee Tories captured a Rebel courier with Johnston’s message to General Jackson instructing him of his movement toward Dallas. A few days later young Brownlow boldly captured a hill at Acworth that his division named Brownlow’s Hill in his honor. Then the Tennessean achieved national recognition when an account of his leading a squad of 38. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 197; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 212–13. 39. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 197–98; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 213. 40. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 203; Carter, First Regiment, 174–75; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 215.

244

The Atlanta Campaign

naked troopers across the Chattahoochee River to capture Rebel guards appeared in Harper’s Weekly. Several factors minimized the role of Union cavalry north of Atlanta. Sherman on the whole, as David Evans writes, “had no affinity for horse soldiers, no grasp of their capabilities, and no patience with their limitations.” As with other commanders lacking cavalry experience, Sherman thought of cavalry as infantry support rather than as an independent, albeit subordinate, unit. During May and June before reaching the Chattahoochee River, according to Evans, Union cavalrymen primarily performed the “unglamorous task” of guarding the army’s flanks. Unlike Rosecrans in Middle Tennessee and Thomas later at the Battle of Nashville, Sherman did little to promote joint infantry-cavalry operations, and he seldom if ever had his infantry come to the aid of his cavalry. Beyond this, he underestimated the amount of forage in northern Georgia, thereby forcing his army’s horses to survive by grazing and in turn making them, in the general’s words, “unable to attempt anything.” Finally, North Georgia was, as Col. Edward M. McCook wrote, “utterly unfit for cavalry operations” because of its terrain, a landscape that included all sorts of natural barriers to the movement of horsemen.41 41. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 3–4, 477; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:453–58; OR, 38(4):268, 399, 507, 627–28.

CHAPTER 15

Two Cavalry Raids

W

hen Atlanta proved difficult to capture, Sherman decided to bombard it and to cut its railroad links from Montgomery, Macon, and Augusta. Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau, eager to exchange his Nashville desk job as commander of the District of Tennessee for some action, offered his services to Sherman to cut the Montgomery & West Point Railroad. Rousseau would concentrate three thousand cavalrymen at Decatur (on the Tennessee River) and move southeast, destroying enemy property, cutting the railroad junction at Opelika, and finally joining Sherman near Atlanta.1 The Louisville lawyer intended to combine the 2nd Kentucky and 8th Indiana, garrisoned at Nashville, with Duff Thornburgh’s brigade of Tennesseans at Decatur. But he decided against using the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee because of their behavior at Okolona. Rousseau selected only Maj. Meshack Stephens’s 4th Tennessee, commended for “coolness and courage and discipline” at Okolona. To these he added the 5th Iowa Cavalry. To supply the 8th Indiana, he commandeered the “horses, saddles, and bridles” of the 3rd Tennessee. The general’s actions caused the highly respected Thornburgh to resign from the army. His brother, Lt. Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh, replaced him as brigade commander. But the brigade now was scattered in four locations, with one regiment gone to Georgia, one dismounted, and one partially mounted— altogether only three hundred mounted men.2 Rousseau moved out of Decatur on July 10 with two brigades—the First commanded by Col. Thomas J. Harrison of the 8th Indiana and the Second by 1. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:69; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:462; TICW, 1:323, 328. 2. TICW, 1:323, 328; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:463; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 49–50; OR, 38(2):904–5; RAGT, 388; Jacob M. Thornburgh to Johnson, July 21, 1864, PAJ, 7:46.

246

The Atlanta Campaign

Col. William D. Hamilton of the 9th Ohio—and Battery E, 1st Michigan Light Artillery. On two rather uneventful days, the column rode over forty miles and crossed much of Sand Mountain. Along the way the men fired at a few enemy scouts, captured a few furloughed Rebels who Rousseau paroled, seized some horses, and consumed hardtack and coffee. At the hamlet of Summit, where they concentrated and camped the second night out, the Federals raided the combined general store and post office, where they found only a little mail and dried-out plug tobacco.3 The next day Stephens’s troopers, in the advance, rode into an ambush by Col. Adam Johnson’s partisan rangers. According to Johnson, he “sent two [scouts] into the road to fire . . . and then to retreat” to a ravine, where he had placed his horsemen. Although “the ruse occasioned some confusion in the Federal force, they declined to follow [his] scouts as if they feared some snare.” Down the road Stephens’s men drove away a few bushwhackers. Later they captured a train of four wagons manned by a quartermaster and eighteen soldiers. Along with other Federals at Blountsville—a town of four hundred inhabitants—they plundered the post office, freed two deserters and four runaway slaves from the jail, and burned some cotton. This became their modus operandi when raiding towns on the expedition.4 Riding on several miles, two of the East Tennesseans stopped alongside a cabin, where a woman stood framed in the doorway. Exhausted and thirsty, they asked for a drink of water. After satisfying their thirst, they requested food. She served them a corn pone, which they quickly consumed. As they turned to ride away, she asked, “Who mout you’ns be?” “Yankees,” they said. “You’ns ain’t no Yankees,” she declared. Although they insisted, she shook her head from side to side: “I know you’ns ain’t no Yankees,” because “you’ns haint got no horns.” “Oh,” said one of the Tennesseans, “we are young Yankees, our horns haven’t sprouted yet. The horned Yankees are in the rear and will be up directly.”5 3. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 98–101. 4. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 101–3; Adam Johnson, The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army: Memoirs of General Adam R. Johnson, ed. William J. Davis (Austin, 1995), 164. 5. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 56–57; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 104.

Two Cavalry Raids

247

After riding for forty miles, the column halted for the night near Gin Creek. Because of short rations, Rousseau sent Stephens ahead five miles to Ashville. Others would follow at daylight. The former sheriff and his men routed the residue of a small garrison about midnight before capturing a government storehouse. Once others reached Ashville and had their fill, they ransacked the post office, then freed a handful of prisoners from the jail. With printers among the ranks, the Federals revised the press-ready Ashville Vidette to announce that “Maj. Gen. L. H. Rousseau, of [the] U.S. Army, paid [the] town . . . a visit this morning, accompanied by many of his friends.” That afternoon, on the general’s orders, the troopers burned the town’s remaining commissary. As they would do elsewhere, they generally left private property untouched.6 From Ashville Rousseau rode east between the mountains toward Greensport, fifteen miles away, where the Coosa River ran slow but deep down from North Georgia. To reach his objective of the Montgomery & West Point Railroad, he had to cross the river where Rebels awaited. Aware the journey ahead would be difficult, he thinned out three hundred sick men and the weaker horses and sent them north to a Union garrison at Claysville.7 The raiders crossed the Coosa at two points: Greensport, where Green’s Ferry operated, and four miles below at Ten Islands. At ten o’clock that evening, Rousseau sent Maj. Thomas Graham’s battalion of the 8th Indiana to begin their crossing on a ferryboat (retrieved earlier). Graham blocked the road to Green’s Ferry until dawn. Once across, the Indianans moved along the bank toward the ford at Ten Islands. En route they encountered the 6th Alabama, one of two cavalry regiments commanded by Brig. Gen. James H. Clanton. The general’s other regiment, the 8th Alabama, stood guard on the east bank at Ten Islands.8 Rousseau’s main column arrived about dawn at the Ten Islands ford near Woods Island. Here, where Gen. Andrew Jackson crossed the river in 1813 during his campaign against the Creek Indians, the river narrows and runs swiftly. At Rousseau’s order the men of the 5th Iowa rode their horses into three feet of water around the northern part of Woods Island. As they moved beyond the island to complete the crossing, Clanton’s 8th Alabama opened fire. Stephens’s 4th Tennessee rushed to support the Iowans. “The horses 6. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50–51; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 104–7. 7. OR, 38(2):905; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 107–8. 8. OR, 38(2):906; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 51–52; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 110–18.

248

The Atlanta Campaign

Sites of Tennessee Union Cavalry Activity in Alabama

floundered over the rocks and fell into the holes, ‘ducking’ many of their riders,” wrote Cpl. Alexander Eckel of the 4th, “while . . . rebel bullets fell thick and fast around them.” When they got themselves securely on the east bank, the Federals could capture only a few of the fleeing graycoats. Graham’s battalion had already reached the rear of the 8th Alabama and was methodically expelling the outnumbered enemy.9 Now the column entered “long-leafed pine country.” Moving south five miles from Ten Islands, Rousseau ordered the destruction of Cane Creek Furnace, which was supplying iron for use by the arsenal at Selma. When the column came upon nearby gin houses and barns, Rousseau had detachments burn the cotton.10 9. OR, 38(2):906; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 51–52; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 110–18. 10. OR, 38(2):906; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 51–52; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 118.

Two Cavalry Raids

249

The following morning the Union raiders reached Talladega, a town of about eight hundred inhabitants abandoned the previous night by a small enemy force of “a few old men and boys.” Talladega, the first real town since leaving Decatur, had a three-story brick courthouse, three-story brick hotel (now an army hospital), and an array of mostly wooden establishments. As an army distribution point, it possessed an abundance of commissary. Rousseau ordered it burned along with the “saltpeter works” and the jail, which had housed deserters. Because of its proximity to the square, he spared the railroad depot and threw it open to all, blacks as well as whites. He also prohibited vandalism and protected private property. That afternoon at four o’clock the column rode out, riding into fertile farmland with a large slave population.11 From midmorning of July 15 to the evening of July 17, Rousseau’s regiments rode from Talladega to Loachapoka, a town on the Montgomery & West Point Railroad about one hundred miles to the southeast. They encountered virtually no opposition and found friendly slaves, food to eat, and horses for remounts. The Federals spared other private property, including a cotton mill at Bradford, because Rousseau believed it to be “the only source of support of poor and needy citizens.” But they did burn four warehouses of tax-in-kind at Youngville. Crossing the Tallapoosa River, they ferried pack mules and artillery for an entire night.12 With the 4th Tennessee in the advance, the cavalry crossed a ford replete with rocks and holes, swimming the horses some of the way. Then the column pushed on to Loachapoka, containing little more than a hotel, some dilapidated structures, a blacksmith shop, and a few dwellings. But the village’s depot housed enormous quantities of quartermaster, ordnance, and commissary stores, mostly the latter.13 Rousseau dispatched a 300-man detachment east toward Auburn and scouting parties south toward Tuskegee and west toward Montgomery. Then he had Colonel Harrison’s First Brigade begin the destruction of the railroad moving 11. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 52–53; New York Times, July 31, 1864; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 122–35; Thomas W. Fanning, Hairbreath Escapes and Humerous Adventures of a Volunteer in the Cavalry Service . . . (Cincinnati, 1865), 109–10; Wellington Vandiver, “Pioneer Talladega, Its Minutes and Memories,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 16 (summer 1954):176–79; DuBose, Wheeler, 356; Hugh G. Barclay, “Reminiscences of Rousseau’s Raid,” CV 30 (June 1922): 208–9. 12. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 53; OR, 38(2):907; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 134–36; Fanning, Hairbreath Escapes, 110; New York Times, July 31, 1864. 13. Mark E. Fretwell, “Rousseau’s Alabama Raid,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 18 (winter 1956): 537.

250

The Atlanta Campaign

east from Loachapoka. At the general’s orders the 9th Ohio and 4th Tennessee stood guard at the village. Some snoozed by their weapons as a few others guarded private homes.14 The pitch-pine ties and strap rails enabled a small squad with fence rails to raise and detach “50 to 100 feet of the track” simultaneously. Then, as Rousseau described, “The rails and timbers from one side of the road were placed upon those of the other, and fence rails and other combustible material piled on them, and fire applied.” Unfortunately, the intense heat spewed cinders that incinerated Loachapoka’s blacksmith shop and some warehouses and threatened other buildings. Some of the cavalrymen, at Rousseau’s orders, became improvised firemen.15 That evening Rousseau divided his division into five detachments. He sent four companies each from the 5th Iowa and the 4th Tennessee under Maj. Harlon Baird southwest to Chehaw Station to work east. He ordered the remainder of the 4th Tennessee and the 9th Ohio to tear up track east of Notasulga toward Atlanta. At Beasley’s Station, east of Chehaw Station, Baird’s detachment attacked a group of adolescents out of Montgomery—members of the reserve, provost guard, and fifty-four members of the vacationing University of Alabama Cadet Corps—and young conscripts who joined them at Chehaw.16 When Union reinforcements arrived and attacked the enemy’s left flank, Baird sent the 4th Tennessee farther west around the flank to deceive any troops at Montgomery into remaining there to protect the city. For over an hour the two sides skirmished at Beasley’s Station, with neither giving ground. Then shortly after noon the bluecoats charged. This caused the raw youths, never before under fire, to panic until mounted militia reinforcements arrived from nearby Tuskegee. Desiring no further delay, Rousseau recalled his troops to Loachapoka. After Clanton’s undermanned cavalry, now in pursuit again, tried but failed to block the path back, the 4th Tennessee served as a rearguard. In what appeared to be a retreat, the battle-hardened Yankees got the better of the boy soldiers at Beasley’s Station, killing at least five and wounding about sixty while suffering three killed and only about ten wounded.17 Later that day Rousseau sent the 4th Tennessee and 5th Iowa to Opelika to 14. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 137–38; DuBose, Wheeler, 356. 15. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 137–38; OR, 38(2):907. 16. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 140. 17. Ibid., 145–51; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 53–54; OR, 38(2):907–8; New York Times July 31, 1864; Samuel Will John, “Alabama Corps of Cadets, 1860–65,” CV 25 (Jan. 1917): 12.

Two Cavalry Raids

251

destroy the town’s depot and the railroad track toward West Point, Georgia. While tearing up track, the Tennesseans captured a locomotive out of Columbus, Georgia, covered it with combustibles, and set it ablaze. The next day, after finding the West Point depot “filled with bacon, crackers, and tobacco,” they stole the tobacco to be sold, helped themselves to anything else they wanted, and opened the warehouse to the public before burning the remainder.18 They continued to rip up railroad tracks and to heat them over fires for malleability. Because of the July heat intensified by those fires, they rotated squads working and standing guard. When the Iowans and Tennesseans finished about four o’clock that afternoon, they joined the others at Lafayette, twenty-five miles to the northwest. Early on July 20 they began a three-day trek to link up with Sherman’s army at Marietta.19 Assessing their work, Rousseau congratulated his men for “destroying over thirty miles of an important railroad . . . , several military manufacturing establishments, and immense quantities of supplies.” It would take the Confederates over three weeks to repair the railroad. Once the general reported to Sherman, he returned by rail to his desk job at Nashville. James W. Goodwin wrote many years later that the men of Stephens’s 4th Tennessee “thought a great deal of” Rousseau because he was “kind to the men [and] was on the lookout for their welfare and safety.”20 About the time that Rousseau finished his raid, Sherman ordered Brig. Gen. Kenner D. Garrard’s cavalry division east out of Decatur to cut the Georgia Railroad from Augusta. From July 21 to 24, Garrard’s command destroyed numerous bridges and much of the line to Covington, thirty miles away, while experiencing few casualties. Sherman now looked to his cavalry to cut Hood’s supply line to the south. He ordered McCook and Colonel Harrison, now commanding Rousseau’s division, a combined force of 3,500 men in twelve regiments, to “move rapidly on Fayetteville.” They were to destroy the railroad and telegraph lines for “a space of two to five miles.” The 1st Section Lilly’s 18th Indiana Battery, commanded by Lt. Martin J. Miller, was also assigned for the raid. Sherman ordered General Stoneman and his 5,500 horsemen to circle Atlanta on the east and to link up with McCook’s forces near Lovejoy Station, twenty miles south of the city. At the last moment, much to his later 18. OR, 38(2):908; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 54–55. 19. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 55; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 166–69. 20. OR, 38(2):909; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 28; McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 119.

252

The Atlanta Campaign

regret, Sherman granted Stoneman permission to move south to attempt to free Union prisoners at Macon and Andersonville.21 McCook and Harrison moved separately down the west side of the Chattahoochee on July 27. Their men crossed to the east bank on pontoons well below Campbellton at Smith’s Ferry in the wee hours of the morning the following day. McCook sent the 1st Wisconsin back through Campbellton to deceive Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson and his small division southwest of Atlanta about the movement of bluecoats toward Palmetto. Other than Jackson’s troops, Hood’s available cavalry to oppose McCook included only Wheeler’s 3,800 men southeast of Atlanta. McCook left Smith’s Ferry first, followed by Harrison hours later. Since two roads led from Smith’s Ferry southeast to the Atlanta & West Point Railroad at Palmetto, McCook sent two regiments on the higher road, while Brownlow’s 1st Tennessee led the advance for the others on the lower road. En route the young colonel’s horsemen chased away small squads of irritating sharpshooters.22 Brownlow rode into Palmetto shortly after two other companies and rested on Ezekial Jackson’s porch while others in the column continued to arrive and his bluecoats plundered the post office. Harrison joined them at eight o’clock that night. His troopers found McCook’s men prying up track, “pulling down . . . telegraph wires and pouring out . . . whiskey . . . found in the depot.” The combined force later set fire to the depot of military stores and cotton before riding out east, with the 1st Tennessee in the advance and the 4th Tennessee in the rear—with some who had gotten into the whisky now singing robustly. Their destination was Fayetteville, twenty-five miles away.23 Near the Flint River they overtook Hood’s Atlanta-bound wagons filled with commissary, quartermaster, and ordnance and accompanied by eight hundred horses. Many troopers exchanged worn-out horses for fresh mounts before sabering the others in the neck or through the heart. Corporal Eckel of the 4th Tennessee, riding a loaded pack mule since about Campbellton, now claimed a fine mount. Brownlow claimed a strong stallion supposedly owned by Brig. 21. B&L, 4:337–41; McKay, “Atlanta Campaign,” 140–44; Cox, Atlanta, 174; OR, 38(1):75, 38(2):809, 38(3):657; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 218–19; Carter, First Regiment, 176; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 57–59; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 216; McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 157. 22. Carter, First Regiment, 177; Granville C. West, “McCook’s Raid in the Rear of Atlanta and Hood’s Army, August 1864,” in The Atlanta Papers, comp. Sydney C. Kerkis (Dayton, Ohio, 1980), 546–47; OR, 38(2):762; William E. Sloan Diary, July 28, 1864, TSLA. 23. Carter, First Regiment, 177; OR, 38(1):76; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 226–27; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 59; West, “McCook’s Raid,” 549.

Two Cavalry Raids

253

Gen. Mark P. Lowrey, the Mississippi preacher turned soldier. East of Fayetteville the Federals captured five hundred wagons and 422 prisoners, including seventy-two officers. From a paymaster’s wagon loaded with bales of virtually worthless Confederate currency, the Tennesseans “filled their pockets.” Capt. Moses Wiley of Company A claimed that “it was [his] fortune to capture the Chief Quartermaster of Gen. [William W.] Loring’s corp[s],” appropriately enough named “Maj. [E. A.] Banks, with his chest of Government funds.” Later, “by way of a joke,” they offered comrades “a few thousand dollars.” Most of the Rebel currency, wrote Wiley, was “used for kindling fires.”24 As Brownlow’s regiment approached the Flint River, five miles west of Lovejoy’s Station, gray guards torched the covered bridge. Reacting quickly, the colonel and his advance charged through the burning bridge, overtook the fleeing guards, and extinguished the fire with river water, saving the structure in time for the other raiders to cross. At dawn on July 29, they reached Fayetteville, where they captured a few more graybacks, rested for two hours, and then rode on to Lovejoy’s Station on the Macon & Western Railroad.25 McCook’s Federals arrived early on the morning of July 29 but saw no signs of Stoneman. Some fought skirmishers, others (such as Maj. Russell Thornburgh’s battalion of the 1st Tennessee) destroyed the depot and railroad cars, but most destroyed two and a half miles of track and five miles of telegraph line. McCook waited until two o’clock that afternoon for Stoneman, unaware that he had acted on his own volition by moving directly on Macon to gain acclaim by freeing Federal prisoners. Soon learning that Wheeler was moving toward him, McCook ordered a return to the west side of the Chattahoochee by way of Newnan.26 About a mile and a half west of Lovejoy’s Station, where the left fork led to Newnan, graybacks under Sul Ross of Jackson’s command attacked the 4th Kentucky, serving as the rearguard of McCook’s column on Panhandle Road. After two hours of skirmishing, Ross captured two companies before the Kentuckians burned the bridge over the Flint River about sundown. But the fighting had bought some time for the creeping column, slowed by four hundred prisoners on mules setting their own pace and what Croxton called the “everlasting train of pack mules.” Officers had to detail troopers to awaken soldiers 24. Carter, First Regiment, 177–78; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 228–30; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 59–60; West, “McCook’s Raid,” 549–50; National Tribune, May 26, 1892. 25. Carter, First Regiment, 178–79. 26. West, “McCook’s Raid,” 549–51; OR, 38(2):762–63, 770; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 219.

254

The Atlanta Campaign

and to keep the column on the main road. At Lime Creek, on Croxton’s orders, Brownlow’s men rode to the rear, demolished the bridge, and served as the rearguard into Newnan, ten miles to the west. By now the Rebels blocked the primary road into Newnan, but McCook found a black guide familiar with a back road into town.27 Near Newnan at midmorning on July 30, the Federals cut the telegraph wires and ripped up railroad track at three points. But arriving in the town, McCook fell victim to his earlier cutting of the railroad at Palmetto. Brig. Gen. Philip D. Roddey and 550 Confederates of his dismounted 4th Alabama had walked for miles around burnt track near Opelika to travel by rail to Atlanta. Now they had to stop at Newnan. Standing in McCook’s path, they fired from along the track and from buildings. Believing the enemy to be a formidable infantry force, McCook retreated. Following a two-hour search for the best exit, he circled to the southwest to reach Ricketyback Road. Meanwhile at noon Wheeler arrived in Newnan with 700 troops, joined shortly thereafter by an additional 400 from Jonesboro and another regiment by train.28 Five miles from Newnan near Brown’s Mill in the afternoon, McCook found the road ahead again blocked and troops in the woods to his north. After two futile attempts to unblock the road, he called for Harrison’s brigade in the rear to move against the enemy to the north. Harrison dismounted the 5th Iowa and 4th Tennessee and deployed them to attack. In two hours of fighting, some graycoats retreated while others slipped down a ravine around the 4th Tennessee’s right flank. Finally the Tennesseans scrambled back to save their horses. At Newnan, citizens could hear “small arms . . . distinctly. . . . but little artillery firing.”29 About half a mile to the west, Brownlow’s dismounted troopers charged the advancing enemy, capturing some of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA). Its prisoners included Brig. Gen. William Humes, sporting a black plumed hat 27. Carter, First Regiment, 179–81; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 60–61; OR, 38(2):770–71, 773; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 251–52; DuBose, Wheeler, 377. 28. DuBose, Wheeler, 378; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 260; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 61; OR, 38(2):763, 771; West, “McCook’s Raid,” 562–63; Carter, First Regiment, 180–81; Alexander Eckel, “The Rousseau and McCook Raids: Thrilling Adventures, Desperate Chances, Much Hard Fighting, and Narrow Escapes,” in The National Tribune Scrap Book: Stories of the Camp, March, Battle, Hospital, and Prison Told by Comrades, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C., [1909]), 3:10. 29. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 260–61; Eckel, “Rousseau and McCook Raids,” 10; OR, 38(2):763, 772; Carter, First Regiment, 181; Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 227; DuBose, Wheeler, 378–79; Jackman, Diary, 145.

Two Cavalry Raids

255

pinned with a silver buckle. But soon a counterattack by the 8th Texas Cavalry freed the general, now wearing “an old planter’s hat.” The 8th Iowa captured Sul Ross, commanding the 3rd and 27th Texas Cavalry, only to see him repatriated too. Humes and Ross fared better than did Lt. Col. Paul F. “Old Paul” Anderson of the 4th Tennessee (CSA), who in the wake of his third repatriation announced: “Boys, it looks like the Yankees [are] determined to have me.” General Ross later succinctly described war’s vicissitudes: “Friends and Foes were mixed up in the struggle, the victor one moment becoming a captive to his prisoner the next.”30 Feeling the situation dire, McCook summoned his officers around five o’clock that afternoon. He suggested surrender, for they were “surrounded . . . by an overwhelming force”; had heavy casualties, including ranking officers; and would soon be without ammunition. Brownlow spoke for others as well as himself when he responded that “he would be d——d if he would ever surrender.” “What will you do?” inquired McCook. “How can you help it?” “Why, I can and will cut my way out,” Brownlow said with conviction. “I would about as soon be killed in the attempt as to be captured and sent to Andersonville or Libby. They treat us Southern soldiers worse in those prisons than they do you Northern soldiers, and I am going to cut my way out if my men will follow me.”31 When others, including Colonel Croxton and Major Stephens of the 4th Tennessee, agreed with Brownlow, McCook allowed his commanders with their troopers to cut through Wheeler’s lines to the Chattahoochee. The general ordered his brigade officers to form two columns, one to go first and the other to follow. He left behind his wounded, regimental surgeons, prisoners, and pack mules. After Brownlow explained to his horsemen what he intended to do, “they raised a shout and said, ‘You are right, Colonel; by G—d, we will follow you!’ ”32 Being assigned the first column’s advance, Brownlow led six hundred troop30. Dodson, Campaigns of Wheeler, 228; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 261–62; OR, 38(2):763, 772; Carter, First Regiment, 181–82; W. H. Davis, “Cavalry Expeditions in Georgia,” CV 16 (June 1908): 261. 31. Carter, First Regiment, 182; Eckel, “Rousseau and McCook Raids,” 10; OR, 38(2):774–75; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 267–68. 32. Carter, First Regiment, 182; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 268–69; OR, 38(2):774; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 29–30.

256

The Atlanta Campaign

ers across the bridge nearby at Big Sandy Creek, through the woods, across Corinth Road, and west toward the Chattahoochee. At one o’clock in the morning on July 31, he reached the river’s steep banks near Hollingsworth Ferry, where he found two canoes. Most of his six hundred men dismounted and swam across, but others, unwilling to part with their mounts, “plunged their horses into the river.” By the time three hundred men had crossed, pursuing graycoats opened fire along both banks, capturing many and scattering others, including Brownlow.33 Pvt. William E. Sloan of the 5th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA), wrote in his diary: “We captured about 100 men. Brownlow made his escape by swimming the river and leaving his horse and equipments in our hands. This is the second time that Col. Brownlow has escaped capture by our regiment by a hair’s breadth.” Earlier in April Sloan’s regiment had missed capturing Brownlow at Warren’s Crossroads in Polk County, Tennessee, because the 1st Tennessee had left for Cleveland, Tennessee.34 The 4th Tennessee rode as the rearguard of the second column of 1,200 men led by Lt. Col. Fielder Jones of the 8th Indiana and accompanied by McCook. With the help of a black guide, they galloped down Corinth Road through the hamlet and on toward Philpot’s Ferry. Shortly before midnight the column reached the ferry, ten miles below where Brownlow crossed. The small ferryboat they found could not accommodate the men fast enough. Most sent their accoutrement ahead on a raft, then forced their horses into the river and struggled with their mounts in the swift current. Many survivors found themselves afoot on the west bank.35 Soldiers were still crossing at sunrise when graybacks approached from the east. A detachment of Lt. Pleasant C. Smith’s Company C, 4th Tennessee held them back until the last boatload crossed. When Smith saw his handful of men left to the enemy, he led them “down a ravine through [a] field of corn, to the river.” There they took some nearby fence rails with which they “built a raft and got across the river.”36 The 4th Tennessee now had more than two hundred men on the west bank, most barefooted and unaccustomed to walking. Although they desperately 33.OR, 38(3):956; Carter, First Regiment, 183–84; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 269–70. 34. William E. Sloan Diary, July 31, 1864, TSLA. 35. OR, 38(2):763; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 274–75. 36. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 63; Eckel, “Rousseau and McCook Raids,” 11; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 276.

Two Cavalry Raids

257

searched the countryside for horses, they found few worthy of the name. Some mounted a farmer’s “antiquated horse or mule,” or even an ox or milk cow, and rode it as far as they could. Those on foot avoided roads. Walking through the woods, they felt “every old Georgia farmer [with] a gun was on the lookout” for them. Summer showers brought some relief from the heat but also made “the red clay [stick] closer than a brother.”37 Major Stephens, minus one hundred of his men, rode with McCook toward Wedowee, Alabama. At Rock Mills, Alabama, remembered by Stephens from Rousseau’s raid, McCook ordered his men on foot to scatter and walk east toward Atlanta while the others created a diversion by riding north. At Wedowee, home of many unionists, the remaining raiders slept for the first time in days. On August 2 they rode briefly north and then east, reaching the Tallapoosa River, twenty miles from Marietta.38 Meanwhile Colonel Brownlow, barefooted with a worse-for-the-wear straw hat covering his sun-darkened face, rode an old horse with only a blanket and a bridle toward Marietta. Along with a squad from assorted regiments, he arrived on the morning of August 1. Accompanied by Col. John G. Parkhurst later that day, Brownlow, still shabbily dressed, rode to General Thomas’s headquarters at the front. The young colonel told Thomas the essential elements of the expedition: burning five hundred supply wagons, destroying track (enough to delay traffic for fifteen days), Stoneman’s no-show, McCook’s return by way of Newnan, the battle at Brown’s Mill, and his own flight across the Chattahoochee.39 When Thomas inquired about McCook’s other men, Brownlow responded, “I don’t know where in the devil they are.” Before the colonel left, the general gave him a pair of boots for his bare feet. He then reported to Sherman the substance of what he heard.40 Confederates held McCook’s captured troopers on the battlefield during July 30–31. Blueclad officers from Tennessee and Kentucky and their Rebel counterparts reportedly “had a grand hand-shake”; some “old acquaintances met as friends.” Later Union surgeons left behind to treat the wounded worked with Confederate doctors and nurses at the overcrowded army hospital at 37. Eckel, “Rousseau and McCook Raids,” 11. 38. OR, 38(2):764; Eckel, “Rousseau and McCook Raids,” 11. 39. Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 285; William Douglas Hamilton, Recollections of a Cavalryman of the Civil War after Fifty Years, 1861–1865 (Columbus, Ohio, 1915), 142–43. 40. OR, 38(2):774–75.

258

The Atlanta Campaign

Newnan. Despite some initial antipathy toward them, wounded Yankees were treated well. Unfortunately handshakes and good treatment for their wounded did not prevent Rebel soldiers from robbing the prisoners and “denuding” their dead of valuables and clothing. Still the living were happy to have survived. One Texas lieutenant described the captives as “jovial fellows” who “sang their war songs for us” and “[took] their bitter medicine without a grimace.” Confederates eventually housed eight hundred prisoners—some “brought in by squads for several days”—in a cotton warehouse before shipping them south: officers to Macon and enlisted men to Andersonville.41 The two cavalry raids that included Tennessee bluecoats during the Atlanta Campaign yielded dramatically different results for the men involved. Rousseau’s raid, which included Stephens’s 4th Tennessee in his five-regiment division, rode south through lightly defended eastern Alabama. These troopers fought what Corporal Eckel called “two pretty severe skirmishes,” those at Ten Islands and Chehaw Station. They also destroyed a number of factories and depots before burning thirty miles of railroad track and turning toward Atlanta with little loss. McCook’s raid below Atlanta destroyed wagon trains, railroad track, and a depot before the general realized that Stoneman was off fighting his own private war rather than rendezvousing with them as planned. Endeavoring to escape the concentrating troopers of Wheeler’s command, McCook’s column eventually confronted them at Newnan. During the action at Brown’s Mill, Tennessee bluecoats fought just as gallantly as other blues or grays. In the final dash to cross the Chattahoochee, Brownlow, an adamant opponent of surrender, led one of two columns through Rebel lines to escape capture. Stephens’s 4th served as the rearguard at the river for the other. 41. National Tribune, Aug. 8, 1889; Kate Cumming, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, ed. Richard B. Harwell (Baton Rouge, 1959), 219; Fannie A. Beers, Memories: A Record of Personal Experience during Four Years of War (Philadelphia, 1888), 156–59; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 280–84, 479; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 71; Jackman, Diary, 145; S. B. Barron, “Wheeler’s Cavalry in Georgia Campaign,” CV 14 (Feb. 1906): 70.

CHAPTER 16

Wheeler on the Railroads

F

ollowing the defeat of McCook’s cavalry south of Atlanta, Hood ordered Wheeler to “break the [rail] roads running from Nashville.” He also requested that Generals Forrest and Roddey, then in Mississippi and Alabama, attack the same two railroads. Wheeler’s command for the raid consisted of five thousand horsemen—mostly from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama—in three divisions and a battery of six light artillery pieces. His Tennessee regiments included many men hoping for a brief visit at home. Wheeler hoped to take advantage of these visits to recruit additional troops. Clogged roads and the lack of forage led him to divide his cavalry into two or three detachments within supporting distance of one another.1 After McCook’s ill-fated raid, Brownlow’s regiment rode by rail to Nashville, seeing “unsurpassed . . . scenery” and manmade “earthwork and graves.” With bronzed faces and faded dusty uniforms, the Tennesseans marched through the streets of Nashville, a city accustomed to such comings and goings. Then the men pitched their tents under oaks and poplars at Camp Smith, overlooking the Cumberland River. Here visiting agents of the Christian Commission gave them writing materials, sewing kits, and religious literature. They spent a few of their own hard-earned greenbacks to purchase fresh fruits, including peaches and watermelons, from local peddlers. Until Wheeler threatened the capital, the regiment was dismounted along with others in Croxton’s brigade.2 1. OR, 38(3):673, 957; Castel, Decision in the West, 466; McDonough and Jones, War So Terrible, 286, 288. 2. Carter, First Regiment, 188–89.

260

The Atlanta Campaign

Leaving behind seventy-five casualties in Georgia, Major Stephens’s 4th Tennessee, reduced to “238 men and 29 serviceable horses.” returned to the District of North Alabama at Decatur to picket and scout. Sadly but understandably, the sacrifices of the raid below Atlanta, its aftermath, and the suffering of their families in East Tennessee overwhelmed some of them. Howard Isbel of Company F, for example, “shot himself in the head, causing death instantly.” He was the brother of Capt. John Isbel, commander of Company F, “who died a short time before.” Nevertheless, as part of Col. William F. Prosser’s First Brigade of Gillem’s Fourth Division, the 4th Tennessee soon was engaged in keeping General Roddey south of the Tennessee River.3 Spalding’s Second Brigade (5th, 10th, and 12th Tennessee) of Gillem’s division was stationed at Pulaski and Tullahoma. The 10th and 12th at Pulaski patrolled as far south as the Tennessee River, while the 5th at Tullahoma guarded small-town posts along the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. All three regiments captured, tried, and executed bushwhackers and guerrillas. Col. John K. Miller’s Third Brigade (8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee), along with Gillem, had been ordered by Governor Johnson in August to free upper East Tennessee of guerrillas and of regulars commanded by John Hunt Morgan. Gillem arrived in Knoxville on August 17 before marching toward Bulls Gap.4 Wheeler’s command rode north out of Covington, Georgia, on August 10, his men mounted on overridden and underfed horses. Because of summer rains, his men faced swollen rivers and difficult-to-burn soaked railroad timbers. Some of the Rebels fired on a train and tore up track south of Acworth as others pushed on to demolish track and rustle cattle near Calhoun. As one of his divisions tore up track from Tifton toward Dalton, the rest of Wheeler’s command attacked Dalton. When his bluff to charge the fort there failed, Wheeler ransacked the town, desperately searching for corn for his horses.5 As Rebel skirmishers moved north on the fifteenth, they engaged 1,800 infantrymen—mostly blacks—of Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman’s command down from Chattanooga. Brig. Gen. John S. Williams’s brigade, about 500 strong, moved upon Tunnel Hill above Dalton, hoping to cave in the railroad 3. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 65–67; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 35; TICW, 1:332. 4. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 108–9, 117; TICW, 1:345, 349–50; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Aug. 17, 1864, PAJ, 7:101; Jacob M. Thornburgh to Johnson, July 21, 1864, ibid., 46–47. 5. OR, 38(2):495–96; Castel, Decision in the West, 466.

Wheeler on the Railroads

261

tunnel with blasting power. But Steedman’s presence nearby caused Williams to move on toward Chattanooga, followed by Wheeler’s cavalry and Steedman’s infantry. The Confederates bypassed Chattanooga and advanced upstream below the swollen Tennessee River in search of forage. Pleased with Wheeler’s choice, Sherman remarked: “East Tennessee is a good place for him to break down his horses and a poor place to steal new ones.”6 At his hometown of Benton, Tennessee, east of Cleveland, Sgt. John C. Williamson on August 16 received a reserved reception, for many locals had taken the Union loyalty oath that, in his opinion, “defile[d] all good society.” That night Wheeler’s horsemen crossed the Hiwassee River until midnight. The next day they moved along the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, gutting Athens and, in Williamson’s words, “robb[ing] some good Southern people.” After being opposed briefly by Byrd’s 1st Tennessee Infantry (USA), which fell back to Loudon, Wheeler bypassed that town and swung east of Kingston, both guarded by Tennessee Union infantry.7 On August 21 at Maryville, the advance attacked and captured a twenty-sixman detachment of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry taking refuge in the county courthouse. Meanwhile Steedman, “a determined man, at his best in emergencies,” pursued Wheeler from Chattanooga with 3,600 infantrymen as far as Madisonville, sixty miles to the northeast. Then the general returned to his home base in order to help defend the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad should Wheeler swing back into the Sequatchie Valley.8 Finding the Holston River below Knoxville too high to cross, Wheeler moved up the valley, bypassing Knoxville, commanded by Brig. Gen. Davis Tillson with 1,900 soldiers, though including only seventy-five cavalrymen. Tillson had also armed “500 convalescents and 200 quartermaster employees” as well as 500 townsfolk. General Williams, once a commander in East Tennessee, convinced Wheeler to destroy the bridge at Strawberry Plains to cut off Gillem’s line of communication with Knoxville. To do so the Rebel commander divided his forces: the main column under his command rode west, while Williams, a huge man and a heavy drinker, remained behind with his 6. OR, 38(3):323–24, 957–59; Castel, Decision in the West, 466; McDonough and Jones, War So Terrible, 287. 7. J. C. Williamson, ed., “The Civil War Diary of John Coffee Williamson,” THQ 15 (Mar. 1956): 62–63; OR, 38(3):958–59. 8. OR, 38(5):564–65, 607.

262

The Atlanta Campaign

brigade and that of Brig. Gen. Felix H. Robertson, along with three pieces of artillery. Robertson later recalled that they “passed . . . time . . . at Strawberry Plains in some desultory artillery firing” and “never attacked in force . . . upon the garrison.” Some of the horsemen did destroy track that temporarily cut Gillem’s supply line to Knoxville. But Williams and Robertson fell farther behind and were bushwhacked by loyalists as they exited East Tennessee.9 At Post Oak Springs west of Knoxville, Wheeler detached Colonel Anderson with the 4th and 9th Tennessee. He ordered him to move down the Sequatchie Valley to attack an unfinished fort at Tracy City and then to destroy the railroad tunnel at Cowan. Wheeler then had the 8th Tennessee of Brig. Gen. George G. Dibrell’s brigade—many of whose men were natives of the upper Cumberland—take the advance to Sparta and begin recruiting. The general and his main column followed through the Cumberland Plateau, described by an accompanying journalist as “a pile of dirt and limestone which divides East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee.”10 Wheeler reached Sparta on August 29. He directed Dibrell’s men, some of whom had ridden to attack McMinnville, to stay two more days to remount and recruit. Two days later Amanda McDowell of Cumberland Institute recorded in her diary that “[s]ome of the scholars have joined” the Confederate army “thinking they would be compelled to” anyway. Wheeler continued toward Lebanon, where ten Mount Vernon Academy students and their horses joined Company B, 4th Tennessee (CSA). His cavalrymen hoped their raid would influence the Democratic Party’s national convention just beginning in Chicago in nominating a peace candidate. Encouraged by the hundreds of recruits, including guerrillas, “absentees,” and students, Wheeler issued a proclamation for more volunteers, pledging to redeem Tennessee “if all who should . . . join us.”11 After withdrawing the quartermaster stores from McMinnville, Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy at Tullahoma, commanding the defenses of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, issued orders to Maj. Shelah Waters, commanding a detachment of the 5th Tennessee at the town. Waters was to post pickets to the 9. Ibid., 38(2):739–40; Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 178, 210; Felix H. Robertson, “On Wheeler’s Last Raid in Middle Tennessee,” CV 30 (Sept. 1922):334. 10. Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 175–86, 180–82. 11. Ibid., 185–86; “Amanda McDowell Diary,” in McDowell and Blankenship, Fiddles in the Cumberlands, 246 (Aug. 31, 1864).

Wheeler on the Railroads

263

east; if threatened, skirmish to determine the enemy’s strength; then if necessary send off his equipment with loyal citizens by rail toward Tullahoma before covering his garrison’s withdrawal on horseback. Dibrell’s command of three hundred regulars and guerrillas attacked McMinnville on August 29. After sending the train west, Waters ignored Milroy’s instructions. He skirmished with the enemy for three hours, losing ten troopers and as many wagons. Then he and his men barely escaped with their lives, their horses, and their two howitzers.12 When the 4th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) returned from McMinnville, many troopers received a pass to go to their homes for a day or two. In addition to seeing their family, they could possibly, wrote one Rebel, “remount themselves, pick up absentees, and obtain recruits.” They could also, he mentioned, “obtain valuable information for the army.” Because Governor Johnson had made all men from eighteen to fifty years of age subject to conscription in a Tennessee unit of the U.S. Army, many of the Confederate absentees who had been hoping they could sit out the remainder of the war were now willing to return to their old units.13 “Sanders old company” from the Rome area visited home but stayed “only a few hours.” They reportedly “had to hide in the bushes & cornfields the most of that time” because of roaming Union cavalry. One trio, Capt. Marcellus Grissom, his brother Tom, and a cousin named Hawkins, ventured to eat breakfast at the home of the brothers’ parents. Aware that graybacks were in the neighborhood, Capt. Marion McKee of Company A, 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry galloped up to the house of Jim Grissom with “a small squad of Smith county yanks in confederate uniform[s].” They halted “near the gate & hollowed in that the Yankees were in Rome.” As the youths scrambled out of the house for their horses, the Tories shot all three by the front door. One Rebel later wrote that McKee was “an infernal blockhead scamp who never was fit by breeding or education to black the boots of either of the gentlemen whom he murdered.”14 George B. Guild of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) initially had left his 12. OR, 38(2):490–92. 13. W. W. Ward to James Hale, Sept. 28, 1864, in W. W. Ward, “For the Sake of My Country”: The Diary of Col. W. W. Ward, 9th Tennessee Cavalry, Morgan’s Brigade, C.S.A., ed. R. B. Rosenburg (Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1992), 143–44. 14. Ibid.

264

The Atlanta Campaign

unit with Captain Grissom but traveled on to his home at Gallatin. According to Guild, “A good many Federal soldiers belonging to Colonel Stokes’s regiment were furloughed and at home.” When he and his group saw them along the way or they passed their houses, the Confederates identified themselves as Federals “sent to notify them to return at once to their post at Carthage, [because] it was rumored that Wheeler was coming across the mountain.”15 Guild and the homesick Confederates did not fear a few furloughed Federals, but they feared “the bushwhacking band of Tinker Dave Beatty.” Individuals told them that Beaty and “some of his band had but a moment before preceded [them], and death was certain if we fell into [their] hands, as they took no prisoners.” That probability caused them to travel mainly at night. After visiting his “wife and little boy,” Guild wrote that his day at home was “one of untold agonies to [his] family,” who feared that he would be discovered. He concluded thereafter “that the army was the safest refuge in time of civil war.”16 Tennessee Union cavalry and mounted infantry regiments manned posts along the Cumberland River at Gallatin, Carthage, and Granville. Except for Jack Garrison’s Company G, 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry and Captain Blackburn’s Company A, 5th Tennessee, those in Wheeler’s path fell back to Carthage. Stokes, commanding at Carthage, had the countryside “full of spies” who reported that Wheeler’s column rode fifteen miles south of Carthage through Alexandria. The Memphis Appeal reporter traveling with Dibrell’s Rebel brigade accused Stokes of forbidding ladies on this occasion “from wearing their [gray] home-spun dresses” to honor the Confederates. Rather than fearing ladies in gray, Stokes saw his danger as being the concentration of stragglers and guerrillas.17 Garrison’s company at Liberty had been erecting a stockade until the captain heard of Wheeler’s presence in the Sequatchie Valley. His men scouted south and returned scarcely two hours before the Confederate advance guard galloped into Liberty. Fearing that the troopers were Champ Ferguson’s takeno-prisoners guerrillas, the men scattered “like a covey of birds” to their familiar childhood hiding places, afraid that their homes would be burned if they fired on the graybacks. Most of them remained nearby while the Rebels dined in their homes, demolished unfinished Fort Liberty, seized fresh mounts 15. Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 74–77. 16. Ibid., 77, 96. 17. OR, 38(5):788; TICW, 1:355; Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 184–86.

Wheeler on the Railroads

265

from farms along the pike, and rounded up fifteen of their company before moving on.18 Col. Samuel K. N. Patton of the 8th Tennessee, commanding at Gallatin temporarily after the 9th and 13th Tennessee left for Knoxville, had his men at nearby Fort Thomas. Learning that a squad of Wheeler’s men camped on the south bank of the Cumberland, he shipped a trainload of women and children to Nashville. He also expelled other civilians to the countryside before taking refuge in Fort Thomas. Although some of his troopers visited their homes in the area, Wheeler never touched Gallatin.19 On August 30 Williams and Robertson reached the Cumberland Plateau. Most of their men rode on through Sparta and camped at Caney Fork. But about a hundred remained in the town to have their horses shod. At Caney Fork Robertson spent time searching for the 5th Tennessee’s Captain Blackburn, now bushwhacking Wheeler’s troopers and recruiting his own regiment, the 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry. Reportedly Robertson pursued Blackburn closely enough to capture 125 horses and to cause the young would-be colonel to release seventy prisoners. Because of the need for horses, Robertson wrote that he “endeavored to furlough all the men who had a prospect to mount themselves at home.” At Livingston Mary Catherine Sproul wrote of concealing her family’s one horse, “a very indifference one” at that, because “the rebels were after him daily.”20 Meanwhile Anderson’s detachment, accompanied by Maj. Willis S. Bledsoe’s partisans, rode toward Tracy City, in the region known as “The Barrens,” through a countryside filled with “sandy soil, producing nothing but Jack oaks,” and that was “almost destitute of water and very thinly settled.” The “city” itself consisted of three houses and a coalmine with a branch of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. Anderson attacked on August 30. In a ploy to draw the attention of bluecoats, he sent a squad under Lt. W. H. Phillips to charge the front of the unfinished fort. Phillips fell almost immediately, and his squad sought cover in nearby woods. Although “wounded in the breast and shoulder,” the lieutenant continued to shoot at the fort’s portholes until he “scramble[d] to his feet and stagger[ed] . . . into the timbers.” Meanwhile An18. Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 195; Hale, DeKalb County, 236–38. 19. Walter T. Durham, Rebellion Revisited: A History of Sumner County, Tennessee, from 1861 to 1870 (Gallatin, Tenn., 1982), 201–2. 20. Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 184–85; ORS, 65:499; Robertson, “On Wheeler’s Last Raid,” 335; Schroeder, “Writings of a Tennessee Unionist,” 358.

266

The Atlanta Campaign

derson and others galloped toward the fort’s supposedly unfinished open end. To his dismay the opening now was closed. The enemy had just as many men, one cavalrymen later wrote, “inside of the log structure as [Anderson] had on the outside.”21 Before the skirmish ended with Anderson riding away, a 5th Tennessee detachment guarding the town killed four graycoats and wounded eighteen. Unable to ride, Phillips was soon found in a nearby farm house. Tories saw that “every attention was paid to him, saying he was too brave a man to die from neglect.”22 Having no artillery, Anderson moved south toward Jasper. On the night of August 31, he failed to destroy the solid stone railroad tunnel at Cowan and had to settle for ripping up railroad tracks and cutting telegraph lines. The next day he pursued a small wagon train, whose “wagon beds [during the chase] rolled down the mountain,” strewing the hillside with debris.23 General Milroy at Tullahoma sent the 5th Tennessee forward by rail to Murfreesboro, then followed with Spalding and the 10th and 12th Tennessee. Six miles below Murfreesboro around 3:00 a.m., Milroy’s locomotive hit a huge woodpile thrown across the track by Anderson’s regiments. As graycoats fired on the trains, Milroy jumped from his coach and yelled for his Tennesseans to form battle lines on each side of the train. Seeing the train’s length, the instant response, and the “effectiveness [of the enemy’s] carbines,” Anderson’s troopers retired.24 Early on the morning of August 31, Wheeler, with his headquarters at Smyrna, spread his troopers along the railroad north to south for a distance of over ten miles. Some burned boxcars at Smyrna and destroyed the railroad toward Nashville. Others rode south to block any troops from Brig. Gen. Horatio P. Van Cleve’s command at Murfreesboro. Finding none en route, they instead spent much of their time ripping up track. From Nashville south, Wheeler faced a newly erected elaborate system of 114 log, rock, and iron blockhouses located along the railroad at bridges, trestles, and tunnels.25 Meanwhile at Nashville and Murfreesboro, Rousseau and Van Cleve armed government employees, male nurses, convalescents, and some loyalists. Ac21. Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 73–74; Rowell, Yankee Artillerymen, 93. 22. Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 73–74. 23. OR, 38(5):740. 24. OR, 38(2):490–92. 25. Ibid., 505; Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 187.

Wheeler on the Railroads

267

cording to Sgt. W. R. Carter: “Croxton’s brigade drew horses” from the quartermaster at Nashville, “and everything about our camp was put in order to meet this unexpected movement of Wheeler.” Croxton ordered the 1st Tennessee “to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.” Responding to an appeal from Rousseau, Steedman dispatched 4,000 infantrymen from Chattanooga by rail to Murfreesboro. Rousseau sent his own infantry and Croxton’s cavalry brigade down the Murfreesboro Pike before sunset. Brownlow’s men moved in the advance. Only the whispers of men and the hooves of horses could be heard as they marched toward the glowing light of burning railroad ties at LaVergne.26 Before midnight Brownlow’s regiment skirmished with pickets near the state’s insane asylum north of LaVergne. As ordered, he dismounted his men, sent their horses to the rear to be held by every fourth man, and blockaded the turnpike with a rail barricade. The regiment also threw up “a temporary line of works and remained in line of battle” until dawn. Still in the advance, the regiment rode on to LaVergne, where he found graybacks destroying the railroad. At Brownlow’s command his bluecoats charged Wheeler’s advance guard in “a hand-to-hand fight in which the saber was freely used” upon the main force. But the enemy was partly hidden by a cedar grove. In a counterattack the graycoats pushed back the Tennesseans, inflicting fifteen casualties, including the killing of Sgt. John Hopson as he carried Company B’s guidon. Before riding on to Franklin and the Nashville & Decatur Railroad, the Confederates had destroyed about thirteen miles of track between Nashville and Murfreesboro.27 Rousseau followed Wheeler toward Franklin, with Croxton in the advance. At sunrise on September 2, the Federals found Wheeler’s men tearing up track three miles below the town at Thompson’s Station on the road to Columbia. Expeditiously they brought their battery within a short distance as Wheeler attempted to turn Croxton’s right flank by capturing the guns. Croxton ordered Brownlow to neutralize the enemy’s move by outriding the graybacks to a nearby hill. After he and his men galloped to the bottom of the hill and dismounted, Brownlow “gallantly” led his men up the rocky slope. Face to face a few yards apart at the crest, the sweating adversaries fired a volley. Brownlow fell wounded as a single musket ball ripped through both of his thighs. The sight of a wounded, hated enemy of some notoriety raised a cheer from 26. OR, 38(5):758; Carter, First Regiment, 190; Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 436–37. 27. Carter, First Regiment, 190–91.

268

The Atlanta Campaign

the graybacks as Parson Brownlow’s son was being carried from the smokeladen hill. Brownlow almost bled to death before the surgeon arrived. Meanwhile Lt. Col. Calvin M. Dyer took command as the Tennesseans sought “the friendly protection of a stump, or a tree.” They held their ground until Rousseau’s infantry arrived, darkness fell, and the Rebels moved south toward Columbia.28 Wheeler’s losses included the mortally wounded Brig. Gen. John H. Kelly, who died of a chest wound two days later, and Col. Amson W. Hobson of the 3rd Arkansas Cavalry, who lost an arm. Including Brownlow, the 1st Tennessee suffered seven casualties. Once able to be moved, he was taken to the home of Dr. Daniel B. Cliffe, an Ohio-born physician and one-time Confederate surgeon who turned unionist after Federals entered Middle Tennessee. Within three weeks Brownlow was “out of danger” and had found his future wife, one of the doctor’s daughters.29 Milroy and Steedman arrived at Murfreesboro by rail on September 2. The next day Milroy and his cavalry pursued Williams and Robertson, now joined by Anderson, as they moved from east to west above the town. Spalding and one hundred of his cavalrymen spotted graycoats on the morning of the fourth moving toward Triune. Soon Milroy’s other nine hundred horsemen, clad in uniforms “so dusty they look gray,” followed Spalding. Together late in the afternoon, as they charged the Rebels, an enemy shell downed a large tree limb in front of them. Seizing the moment, “Comanche” Robertson, riding “a kindly disposed little mule,” led a brief countercharge with pistol in hand. Five of the shots of his six-shooter reportedly found “shelter in Yankee soldiers.” When the pursuit halted at Triune, fifteen bluecoats and twenty graycoats had been killed or wounded.30 Williams, Robertson, and Anderson rode on into the night. The next day near Cornersville, Williams reported the Yankees in force between him and Wheeler. Being almost out of ammunition, he reversed his course and moved east through Shelbyville, lightly defended by Captain Wortham’s Company A, 28. Ibid., 192–94. 29. Ibid., 238; William G. Brownlow to Lincoln, Dec. 27, 1864, Abraham Lincoln Papers, LC; PAJ, 6:604n, 7:171n; Cliffe to Johnson, Sept. 24, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Nashville American, May 2, 1879. 30. OR, 38(2):491–92; Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 215; Robertson, “On Wheeler’s Last Raid,” 335.

Wheeler on the Railroads

269

4th Tennessee Mounted. Wortham’s “gallant little company of homeguards,” as Milroy called it, bushwhacked Williams’s troops west of town, then opposed their entrance into town long enough to remove government stores across the Elk River bridge. The Rebel troopers engaged in some “private plunder, then hastily left town, leaving unscathed the railroad and telegraph.” Finding favorable positions, Wortham’s men again bushwhacked the horsemen as they rode toward McMinnville. Describing the journey east, Robertson later wrote, “We passed through Shelbyville and rapidly marched to McMinnville, and thence to a crossing on Caney Fork of Cumberland River, thence up to Sparta.”31 Milroy’s men reached Franklin after sundown on September 5. They needed “ammunition, provisions, and information” as well as their horses shod. At Columbia the next day, Milroy heard that Williams had hurried east. He sent Spalding’s brigade of the 10th and 12th Tennessee to join Rousseau. Then as “bossguard” of the Nashville & Chattanooga, as he called himself, Milroy needed to return to Tullahoma. Reporting on his “little chase after Williams . . . , a pleasant episode” that helped break “the dreary monotony of life at Tullahoma,” Milroy praised his Tennessee Tories. The general could not “speak too highly of [their] bravery, endurance, perseverance, and patience.” He felt that “with proper discipline,” they could be as good as any other Union soldiers.32 On September 3 at Sparta, Dibrell, back from his raid on McMinnville, rode with eight hundred men, mostly unarmed absentees and recruits and poorly armed guerrillas, toward Lebanon. There he learned of the death of his division commander, Kelly. Hoping to rejoin Wheeler’s main column, Dibrell moved south on the fifth toward Tullahoma. South of Readyville, the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry attacked his camp, inciting a general stampede toward Woodbury. During the rout the Pennsylvanians killed 25 men, including Chaplain William Whitsitt of the 4th Tennessee; wounded 100; and captured 130 prisoners and two hundred horses. At Sparta on September 9, Williams, Dibrell, and Robertson agreed to take their commands to join Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn in the upper part of East Tennessee. Reportedly they were “demoralized”; some of their men were “without arms” and others “without horses.” The 9th Pennsylvania and 5th Tennessee pursued the Rebels to near Cooke31. OR, 38(2):493; TICW, 1:411. 32. OR, 38(2):493–94.

270

The Atlanta Campaign

ville. Williams’s advance reached Rogersville on the twenty-first and Bristol by the twenty-seventh.33 When Rousseau pinpointed Wheeler’s location as being west of the railroad at Campbellsville, he ordered General Granger, who had moved his command from Decatur to above Pulaski, to ride with his cavalry to cut off Wheeler by riding to Lawrenceburg. On the afternoon of September 7, Granger and Prosser’s First Brigade (2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tennessee) skirmished with Wheeler’s rearguard through Lawrenceburg. South of the town he received an order from Rousseau to detach the 2nd Tennessee to follow and observe the Rebels. Rousseau sent Granger southeast toward Athens, Alabama, to cut off Williams, who at the time was near Shelbyville.34 Croxton’s cavalry, riding ahead of Rousseau’s infantry, caught the rear of Wheeler’s cavalry near the hamlet of Campbellsville. Finding it difficult to dislodge the graybacks from “an extensive beech forest,” Croxton ordered Dyer to charge the enemy’s line with sabers. Riding through an open field under brisk gunfire, the Federals engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. “Cutting and slashing right and left,” they drove the graycoats from the woods. Such gallantry cost them five men killed or mortally wounded.35 Rousseau left Athens on September 8, pursuing Wheeler, who had been joined by Roddey’s two thousand cavalrymen, having crossed the Tennessee by September 1. Roddey was repulsed by Granger with a company of the 3rd Tennessee and a single piece of artillery near the Sulfur trestle on September 2. But during the next two days, the Rebels recrossed the Tennessee River near Tuscumbia. On September 11 Rousseau called off the pursuit and left for Pulaski with his infantry, soon followed by the cavalry. By then Wheeler’s own adjutant general believed that he could not raise over one thousand troops, and probably not more than five hundred. Wheeler’s own hyperbolic report of the expedition meant little. His raid had failed, his force was depleted and demoralized, and within days the Federals repaired the railroads.36 The Tennessee Tory cavalry served as part of an extensive Federal force scattered throughout Middle Tennessee that was quickly concentrated to prevent 33. Ibid., 504, 39(1):495–96; Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 210–11, 222–25, 232–33, 259, 267; ORS, 65:499; Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen, 190–91. 34. OR, 38(2):496–97, 499–501. 35. Carter, First Regiment, 194–95. 36. Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 237–45; OR, 38(2):497–99, 39(2):859.

Wheeler on the Railroads

271

Wheeler’s detachments from destroying the railroads south of Nashville. Major Waters’s battalion of the 5th Tennessee fought Dibrell’s cavalry for three hours at McMinnville before evacuating as instructed, while another of the regiment’s detachments at Tracy City repulsed Anderson’s column. Then Milroy at Tullahoma combined the 5th with others, including the 10th and 12th Tennessee, to move by rail to Murfreesboro before fighting Robertson and Williams at Triune and marching to Franklin and then south in the overall pursuit of the Rebels. Meanwhile the 1st Tennessee, as part of Croxton’s brigade, fought Wheeler’s main column at LaVergne before pursuing it to Franklin, where Brownlow was severely wounded, then on to Campbellsville. Another column of Prosser’s brigade (2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tennessee) up from northern Alabama, skirmished with Wheeler’s rearguard through Lawrenceburg as the Confederates exited Tennessee. Unable to reunite with Wheeler, Williams, Robertson, and Dibrell left the state by way of East Tennessee, after being pursued for a while by the 9th Pennsylvania and the 5th Tennessee. Wheeler was, as James McDonough and James Jones have written, “gone too long [and] ranged too far.” In the process he scattered his force and concentrated too little on the main task at hand—the destruction of bridges on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad—ultimately losing most of his cavalry. Wheeler’s failure lay more than with his leadership alone. His commanders and men simply could not destroy the newly established blockhouses of thick logs and cellars, some with artillery, guarding the railroad bridges: sixty blockhouses between Nashville and Stevenson and fifty-five between Nashville and Decatur on the other line. One Rebel of the 8th Texas referred to blockhouses as “[o]ur worst resistance” and wrote that at all times while destroying track, his regiment “[k]ept clear of the block house sharp shooters.” Large shops and hundreds of crews at Nashville and Chattanooga also stood ready to repair trains and tracks within a matter of days. With experience, the Union cavalry had improved and their commanders now had the capability to concentrate troops where needed.37 37. McDonough and Jones, War So Terrible, 288; Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 435–36; W. A. Fletcher quoted in Lawson, Wheeler’s Last Raid, 189–90.

CHAPTER 17

Forrest on the Railroads

A

s Sherman approached Atlanta in June 1864, he wrote his cavalry commander in Tennessee, General Sooy Smith, that Gillem’s division should prevent Forrest from crossing the Tennessee River in Alabama. But at a minimum he expected Gillem’s homegrown Yankees to be “in motion” in the seventy-five miles “between Columbia and Florence.” They should not “occupy the same camp [any] two successive days.” In doing so they would need to “habituate their horses to grass and green food.” If greatly outnumbered, they could fall back to well-defended Decatur. Clearly Sherman felt less than optimistic about the Tennesseans. To his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Joseph D. Webster—still in Nashville dealing with transport to the front—he wrote: “I have always regarded General Gillem’s command as a refuge hospital for indolent Tennesseans. I . . . have never reckoned them anything but a political element.”1 Gillem’s Fourth Division included all of the state’s Union cavalry except for Brownlow’s First and remnants of what remained of those units in West Tennessee. Miller’s Third Brigade (8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee) guarded the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Gallatin. In July Rousseau took the 4th Tennessee on his Alabama raid. This left the other regiments of the First Brigade, the 2nd and the temporarily dismounted 3rd, at Decatur, and the Second Brigade (5th, 10th, and 12th Tennessee) at Pulaski. The 5th Tennessee, as usual, was scattered at a number of posts, mostly on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad.2 Roddey, the self-proclaimed “Defender of North Alabama,” spent much of 1. OR, 32(3):536, 38(4):462. 2. TICW, 1:323, 325–26, 328, 332, 352; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 109, 117.

Forrest on the Railroads

273

the summer guarding his own recruiting camps near Courtland and Pond Springs from Prosser’s brigade at Decatur. Scouting on August 8 with “five hundred picked men” of the recently remounted 2nd Tennessee and the mounted two-thirds of the 3rd Tennessee, Prosser moved toward Courtland through a countryside “populated with well-to-do farmers.” Five miles from their destination, they charged and “stampeded” an enemy encampment of a few hundred men and captured fifty prisoners of Col. Josiah Patterson’s 7th Alabama of Roddey’s command. Then they galloped into Courtland. Encountering no opposition in the town located “on a beautiful slope, with streets well laid off . . . , [and] shaded with Catawba trees,” they rested for two days as detachments pressed stock from the surrounding area. Afterward they departed for Decatur with about “one hundred head of cattle, two hundred sheep, and several hogs.”3 Ten days later Prosser found himself outnumbered by Patterson’s five hundred graybacks as he scouted to Moulton. He fell back toward Decatur. Patterson pursued “in the dead hours of the night” and found the Federals at Antioch Church, sleeping near the “smouldering coals” from their campfires. “With a wild yell” the Alabamians charged as they scooped up “fire brands . . . and [threw] them at men and horses.” Some Tories panicked, hastily mounted, and fled for Decatur. But Prosser, “standing firm,” rallied the others. “Form[ing] in a pell-mell way,” they gave battle and repulsed the enemy. Before the fight ended, Prosser’s men had killed fifteen Rebels, wounded twenty, and captured another fifteen.4 Fortunately for the Tories, Forrest had to defend Mississippi in three separate summer raids out of West Tennessee. In addition to guarding his recruiting camps, Roddey did dispatch a few undermanned regiments across the Tennessee River to destroy tracks and bridges, though with negligible results. By September he had returned from Atlanta. From his base at Moulton, Roddey again threatened to cut the Nashville & Decatur Railroad. If permitted by his superiors to operate on his own terms, Forrest himself wanted to attack the railroads in Middle Tennessee.5 When Roddey’s troopers went on the offensive in September, they fared 3. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 109, 117; Robert Dunnavant Jr., The Railroad War: N. B. Forrest’s 1864 Raid through Northern Alabama and Middle Tennessee (Athens, Ala., 1994), 13–14; ORS, 65:335, 432, 436, 438, 448. 4. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 120–21. 5. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 342–421.

274

The Atlanta Campaign

little better. On the first, when scouts reported six hundred of Confederate cavalrymen and three pieces of artillery moving toward the trestle located across Sulphur Branch of the Elk River, General Granger at Decatur dispatched a construction train north with Prosser (now commanding the First Brigade) and the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee. The next morning they repulsed the Alabamians before riding north to fight Wheeler near Nashville. Roddey swung back again, attempting to destroy the trestle, but Granger arrived with the 18th Michigan Infantry, “a piece of artillery,” and a single company of the 3rd Tennessee accompanied by Lt. Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh. During what he called “a brisk skirmish of twenty minutes,” he sent the graybacks scampering toward the Tennessee River.6 A few days after Wheeler crossed into Alabama, Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, the former president’s son now commanding the Department of East Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, met with Forrest, known to him only by reputation. Following a lengthy conversation, Taylor persuaded the “Wizard of the Saddle” to undertake what “Fightin’ Joe” had failed to accomplish. Forrest would, in Taylor’s words, “cut the railroads, interfere with Sherman’s supplies, and divert as many men as possible from [Sherman’s] army.” On September 21 Forrest moved north from Cherokee Station with 3,900 troopers (including 400 on foot). Led by “a careful guide [and] marching by twos,” the Rebels crossed the Tennessee River at mile-wide Ross’s Ford and moved east. Beyond Florence at Shoal Creek, they were joined by Col. William A. Johnson’s 900 men of Roddey’s command.7 Just as Forrest left, two Union reconnaissance expeditions got underway: Colonel Spalding with the 10th and 12th Tennessee scouting from Pulaski to Shoal Creek, and Lt. Col. John B. Minnis of the 3rd Tennessee going from Athens to Rogersville, midway to Florence. Both searched for Roddey’s Alabamians in the area west of the Nashville & Decatur Railroad and east of the Tennessee River. Spalding had reports that Roddey’s troopers “held all of the [flour] mills west of [the] railroad, and . . . were stripping the country of wheat.” Neither officer nor the commanders at Pulaski and Decatur expected them to find Forrest. Granger at Decatur had been assured by Sherman that he “had nothing to fear from General Forrest,” supposedly gone to Mobile.8 6. OR, 38(5):760. 7. Ibid., 39(1):542; Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (London, 1879), 199; Hancock, Diary, 464; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 145. 8. OR, 39(1):536–37, 39(2):454; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 353.

Forrest on the Railroads

275

Moving south from Lawrenceburg on September 23, Spalding reached Howell’s Mill, recently evacuated by Roddey’s graybacks, before continuing south and swinging east. Striking the rear of Forrest’s slow-moving column advancing toward Athens, Spalding captured three wagons and five soldiers, whom he interrogated. Then the colonel dispatched a courier to General Starkweather at Pulaski about Forrest’s movements since the twenty-first, overestimating his strength as eight thousand men. Spalding then began his clockwise return to Pulaski. After arriving on the night of the twenty-fourth, Starkweather sent the colonel south the following day with full authority to take command of operations between the Elk River bridge and Sulphur Branch trestle.9 Prior to leaving on the scout with Colonel Minnis and four hundred other men, thirty-year-old Pvt. William B. Hancock wrote his wife, Nancy, in East Tennessee that he was sending her thirty dollars. He asked her to “make the best use of it” she could. “Spend it all for corn if necessary. Send the children to school as much as you can,” he wrote. Moving counterclockwise, Minnis rode northwest to Lawrenceburg, before turning south toward Florence and then east toward Athens. He learned of Forrest’s operations while skirmishing with the Rebel rearguard near Rogersville. Hoping to enter Athens from the north, the colonel circled clockwise to Lawrenceburg and Sulphur Branch trestle. But by then one of Forrest’s regiments blocked the road to Athens.10 On the night of the twenty-second at Florence, the Confederate commander sent his brother, Col. Jesse A. Forrest, and Lt. Col. Raleigh White with their regiments to push ahead to McDonald Station, south of Athens. They were to seize horses from a large government corral and cut the railroad and telegraph line to Decatur. When the main column arrived near Athens in the late afternoon of September 23, Forrest sent part of Bell’s division east of town, Barteau’s brigade north of the town to cut the railroad from Pulaski, and Col. David C. Kelly’s brigade into the southeastern part of town. Because Forrest expected to attack the next morning, he had his chief of artillery, Capt. John W. Morton, place his guns at strategic points near the fort located west of the town.11 Col. Wallace Campbell, commanding at Athens, had 464 infantrymen of 9. OR, 39(2):455, 470; Dunnavant, Railroad War, 35. 10. Dunnavant, Railroad War, 34–36; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 110; Hancock to wife, Sept. 18, 1864, William B. Hancock Papers, TSLA. 11. Dunnavant, Railroad War. 49; OR, 39(1):542–43; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 428–29.

276

The Atlanta Campaign

the 106th, 110th, and 111th U.S. Colored Infantry, mostly recruits from the surrounding countryside of Alabama and Tennessee; their white officers; and the 150 dismounted troopers of the 3rd Tennessee. The fort, three-quarters of a mile west of Athens and below the encampment, was reportedly “the strongest . . . between Nashville and Decatur.” Its three-hundred-foot circumference on an embankment was surrounded by a stockade fence, a deep eightfoot-wide ditch, and felled trees beyond the ditch. It held ample food for a two-day siege, carbines for the cavalrymen, plenty of cartridges, and 120 rounds for each of its two howitzers.12 Seven miles north stood the five-hundred-foot-long and seventy-three-foottall Sulphur Branch trestle, guarded by a fort manned by six hundred soldiers commanded by Col. William R. Lathrop. Most of the one thousand cavalrymen along the Nashville & Decatur Railroad camped at Pulaski. Commanding there was General Starkweather, well combat tested before being wounded at Chickamauga. Granger had fourteen hundred soldiers at Athens.13 Since Chickamauga, Starkweather had wrestled with a slow recovery and depression. According to ranking officers at Pulaski, including Spalding, he was “drunk and [had] been for some time.” Cavalry under his command included the 10th and 12th Tennessee. By now, as commander of the Fourth Cavalry Division, Spalding exercised control over the cavalry at Pulaski, subject to Starkweather’s will, but had minimal input over the cavalry at Decatur because of circumstances along the Tennessee River.14 General Granger thought that the graybacks of Jesse Forrest and White south of Athens belonged to Roddey’s cavalry—known to the townsfolk to “tear up the railroad, frighten the Yankees & go back as usual” across the Tennessee River. He sent Prosser with 280 of his Tennesseans across the pontoon bridge at Decatur to push the Rebels toward Moulton. But the enemy fell back north toward a flame-lighted Athens, where Colonel Campbell had torched Roswell Hines’s store “to light up the town so as to see the approach of the rebels.” With one final charge, Prosser galloped into the public square. In the heavy rain he found Campbell with twenty men of the 111th U.S. Colored Infantry torching the quartermaster store and loading commissary into wagons for a possible siege of the fort. One block away Col. Thomas H. Logwood’s 15th Tennessee (CSA), had set ablaze the railroad depot and was hurriedly clearing 12. OR, 39(1):523–24; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 138; Hancock, Diary, 465; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 224. 13. Dunnavant, Railroad War, 72. 14. ORS, 65:454.

Forrest on the Railroads

277

the boxcars of much-needed clothing, forage for their horses, and greenbacks from the sacks of a Yankee paymaster.15 Campbell ordered Prosser to charge Logwood at the railroad depot. The colonel refused to endanger his horses, but he did allow thirty of his horsemen to dismount and accompany Campbell’s twenty soldiers in repelling Logwood’s Rebels. Then Prosser’s troopers supplied themselves with as much as they could carry from the boxcars. Campbell and Prosser quarreled again, this time about whether the 2nd Tennessee would help defend the fort or, as Prosser insisted, return to Decatur for reinforcements. Prosser endeavored to persuade him to evacuate Athens in the darkness before Forrest attacked the next morning. But the commander refused and ordered Prosser to burn the commissary depot, which he did later that night. Then Campbell ordered him either to take refuge in the fort or form a battle line nearby, which he declined.16 At a council with his officers, Prosser persuaded them to cut their way out of town. He burned the commissary about midnight. Two hours later, operating under an order of silence, his troopers left with an old black man as a volunteer guide. For two miles they wound their way through alleys, “backyards and vacant lots,” riding within fifty yards of sleeping graybacks, before entering a road to Decatur. Early in the morning Prosser reported to Granger that Forrest camped at Athens in force. Granger sent a trainload of infantry to Athens and initiated a search for more.17 Meanwhile, after spending the night in Athens and positioning his force mainly as dismounted cavalry for three hours the next morning, Forrest ordered a general advance on the nearby garrison. After shelling the virtually impregnable fort for an hour, he sent in a flag of truce to Campbell. The colonel rejected surrender and its terms that “all white soldiers [would] be treated as prisoners of war and the Negroes returned to their masters,” but he agreed to an interview. As was his wont, Forrest fashioned the three-hour interview into a review of his force, “magnifying his own troops.” Using a clever sleight of hand, he convinced Campbell that he had ten thousand troops rather than his actual forty-five hundred.18 15. OR, 39(1):521; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 127, 131; Mary Fielding, “Mary Fielding Diary,” in “To Lochaber Na Mair”: Southerners View of the Civil War, ed. Fay Acton Axford (Athens, Ala., 1986), 141, 142 (Sept. 25, 1864). 16. Dunnavant, Railroad War, 51–52. 17. Ibid., 53; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 129. 18. OR, 39(1):543–44; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 432; Hancock, Diary, 466; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 227–28; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 147.

278

The Atlanta Campaign

Colonel Campbell “dilly-dall[ied]” for a while because he expected reinforcements from Decatur. He later claimed to have heard gunfire from the 102nd Ohio, but by then Campbell feared that they could not reach him. Although the colonel held a council with other officers, he overruled their advice opposing surrender, saying, “The jig is up, pull down the flag.” Then he left to accept the surrender terms. After fighting forward for three hours, the hardfighting relief column, now within sight of the fort, surrendered too, though not before taking heavy casualties; seeing its commander, Lt. Col. Jonas Elliott, mortally wounded; and severely wounding Colonel Forrest. Before the men marched out of the fort, Ella Barr of Nashville, visiting her husband, Henry W. Barr of Company C, 3rd Tennessee, saved “all the jewelry, watches, money [and] other valuables” of the soldiers by concealing them among her possessions. Although they missed the “valuables,” the Confederates acquired some essentials, forcing some of the prisoners to exchange their “good blue pants” and their boots for the Rebels’ well-worn pants and boots.19 Riding out of Athens, Forrest halted briefly at the Maclin’s house. He bragged to the ladies of the household about capturing so-called impregnable blockhouses and the rich resources of Uncle Sam. He boasted that “his guns were the best the U.S. had, as were all his arms & equipment of every kind: Lincoln being a better quartermaster than Jeff Davis, he patronized him.”20 Meanwhile when Minnis found himself cut off by Forrest north of Athens, he returned to the well-constructed earthwork fort along Sulphur Branch. He then reported to Colonel Lathrop, commanding the post with its 200 dismounted Indiana cavalrymen and 400 black soldiers of the 111th U.S. Colored Infantry. Also taking refuge in the fort was Maj. Eli Lilly and the 128 mounted troopers of the 9th Indiana from Pulaski. As with Minnis’s men, Lilly’s riders had skirmished with Forrest’s advance south of Sulphur Branch, leaving the Union horsemen only thirty rounds of ammunition remaining for their Gallagher carbines.21 At sunrise on September 25, after sending his prisoners from Athens toward Florence, Forrest’s cavalry, now fully mounted and with two additional artillery guns, rode north toward the trestle, “spann[ing] a deep ravine.” The fort guarding the trestle was a one-hundred-by-one-hundred-yard “square re19. OR, 39(1):524; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 137; Hancock, Diary, 466–68; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 353–54. 20. Fielding “Mary Fielding Diary,”, 143–44 (Sept. 25, 1864). 21. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 137–38.

Forrest on the Railroads

279

doubt” built on an incline southeast of the ravine below “so as to command the trestle and all approaches.” At each end of the span a blockhouse guarded it. Inside the fort Lathrop deployed his 111th U.S. Colored Infantry along the garrison’s walls and the cavalrymen above them along the parapets. When the general arrived, his artillery commander, Capt. John W. Morton, found “four high points situated above . . . the fort” located a few hundred yards to the south and north. After Lathrop rejected a demand to surrender the fort, Forrest had Morton place his batteries on these higher elevations.22 Forrest called the three-and-a-half-hour engagement a “concentrated storm of shell.” He reported that “[a]lmost every house was perforated with shell, and the dead lay thick along the works of the fort.” Morton’s batteries fired eight hundred rounds against the garrison. Lathrop’s “two twelve-pounder howitzers,” after “respond[ing] vigorously” for about two hours, suffered direct hits. His bluecoats also began to exhaust their ammunition. Within an hour Lilly’s horsemen started shaving down Springfield rounds to fire in their Gallaghers.23 Graybacks on a hill to the northwest saw men in the fort scurrying about “from side to side, vainly seeking cover.” Lathrop fell early, as did Assistant Surgeon Frederick Wagner of the 3rd Tennessee, running to help him. Lathrop’s last words were, “Do not surrender the fort.” Then a succession of officers commanded: Minnis, wounded by an artillery fragment; Maj. Ben Cunningham, shot in the shoulder; and Major Lilly until Minnis recovered enough to resume command. For most of the time, the officers appeared “paralyzed under the tempest of iron showered upon them.”24 Finally, seeing little chance of surviving the enemy’s artillery slaughter, Minnis surrendered a force of almost one thousand men, including three hundred from his own 3rd Tennessee. Forrest burned the trestle and sent the prisoners toward Florence. But an undermanned regiment guarding the prisoners, 150 horses, and wagons loaded with “booty and arms” allowed almost two hundred prisoners to escape.25 Pvt. James A. Pigg, Company E, 3rd Tennessee, reportedly “as good a soldier as ever slung a carbine,” escaped early. He secured some old clothes and a 22. Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 233; Hancock, Diary, 471–73; OR, 39(1):545. 23. Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 234; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 435; Hancock, Diary, 473–74; OR, 39(1):545; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 150. 24. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 138–39; Dunnavant, Railroad War, 79. 25. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 139–40.

280

The Atlanta Campaign

doubled-barreled shotgun and mingled with graycoats around the fort until he could steal a horse and ride away. One officer of the 3rd (name withheld by the regimental historian because his experience had already become “the subject of enough jokes”) avoided being recaptured by running to an old black woman’s house. She hid him under a feather mattress, feigned sickness to the Rebels, and denied seeing any Yankees.26 Pvt. Samuel S. Henry of Company E, always with “an eye to fun,” and Sgt. Lawrence Forkner of Company F, a “very pious” fellow, escaped together. One time they tricked their way out of being caught and on a second occasion they were shot at but missed. Resting, “weary, footsore, and breathless,” Forkner said: “Sam, we have . . . reasons” to thank the Almighty. He suggested that they “knell and pray.” Henry agreed but reminded Forkner that “the Bible teaches us to watch as well as pray.” With as sober an expression as he could muster, Henry proposed to do “the watching” while Forkner did “the praying.”27 Meanwhile Starkweather sent Spalding to take command of all troops between the Elk River bridge and Sulphur Branch. The former schoolteacher left in the afternoon of September 25 and arrived at the bridge about eight o’clock the next morning. He fed his horses and approached the trestle three hours later with eight hundred cavalrymen, including parts of the 9th and 10th Indiana. He fought for twenty minutes at Elk Mound, immediately north of the trestle, before learning of its surrender and returning to Elk River bridge. Although he ordered the white officers and their black soldiers at the blockhouse there and at Richland Creek bridge to defend their positions, the first group headed for Pulaski before the Rebels arrived and the second surrendered without a fight. On September 26 Spalding’s 10th and 12th Tennessee skirmished until dark along the Elkton Pike southeast of Pulaski as Union infantry, artillery, and cavalry continued concentrating by rail from Nashville and Franklin. Sherman and Grant also ordered in other troops, especially from Kentucky and Georgia, to defeat Forrest.28 Earlier that day out of Elkton, Forrest halted at a government corral of black farmworkers who were described by one Rebel as “a dirty and ragged lot . . . content to grasp at the mere shadow of freedom.” Forrest seized the commissary for “several days of rations.” Possibly hoping to drive them back to their masters, he ordered the two thousand blacks, in his words, “to remove their 26. Ibid., 147–49. 27. Ibid., 149–50. 28. OR, 39(1):536–38; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 356–57.

Forrest on the Railroads

281

clothing and bedclothes from the miserable hovels in which they lived, and then [he] burned up this den of wretchedness.” The general then crossed Richland Creek and camped about ten miles from Pulaski.29 On September 27, “after fighting all day” at Pulaski and losing a hundred men, Forrest reported having driven the Union soldiers into their fortifications only to find “General Rousseau with a heavy force well fortified.” In addition to the 10th and 12th Tennessee, the 1st and 4th Tennessee, down from Franklin with General Croxton, fought that day at Pulaski, both sustaining casualties. Spalding supported Croxton south of Elkton that day before returning to repulse a charge at College Hill at Pulaski.30 As his campfires outside Pulaski burned brilliantly—by his orders—that night, Forrest sent Col. James T. Wheeler and a detachment to cut the railroad and telegraph lines to Columbia while the main column moved east toward Fayetteville. Rousseau sent Spalding and a detachment to follow and observe Forrest. The colonel shadowed the main column onto the Fayetteville Pike, ascertained its easterly direction, and reported personally to Rousseau. Spalding wrote of being “in the saddle eight days and nights” during a march of 230 miles and felt that his troopers had “demonstrate[d] to the world that there [were] no braver or better soldiers than Tennesseans.”31 On September 29 Forrest moved toward Tullahoma and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. But scarcely a quarter of the way out at Mulberry, he learned that Tullahoma was too heavily fortified with troops up from Chattanooga and Atlanta. He abandoned his plan to cut the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, deciding instead to concentrate on destroying the Nashville & Decatur Railroad, beginning at Spring Hill and Columbia. He also sent Brig. Gen. Abraham Buford with fifteen hundred troopers to “destroy the Memphis & Charleston Railroad from Huntsville to Decatur.”32 Tearing up track along the way, Forrest reached Spring Hill on October 1. There he turned track “down an embankment” and headed toward Columbia, capturing four blockhouses and burning three railroad bridges. The next day, six miles from Columbia, he found that Rousseau had pulled his army back from Pulaski. Facing a “redoubted force [with] only half of [his] troops,” the 29. OR, 39(1):545; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 200–201; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 151; Young, Seventh Tennessee, 106. 30. Carter, First Regiment, 196–97; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 68; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 35. 31. OR, 39(1):538, 546. 32. Ibid., 546.

282

The Atlanta Campaign

Rebel chieftain decided to save his force by moving rapidly toward the Tennessee River. Among the more than one thousand horsemen pursuing him were the 1st and the 4th Tennessee. On October 6 the troopers caught his rearguard and fought “a brisk skirmish” at Cypress Creek before Forrest crossed the Tennessee River at Bainbridge.33 Meanwhile General Buford—a huge “jolly Kentuckian” riding “a fine mule”—struck the Winchester Pike and marched toward Huntsville, by now occupied by twelve hundred Federals, including one battalion of the 2nd Tennessee. He ran into pickets north of the town about sunset on September 30 and positioned his troopers to the north and west for the night. Residents fleeing the town for the surrounding mountains informed the Kentuckian that James Morgan’s eight thousand Union infantrymen approached from Chattanooga. This prompted Buford to send David C. Kelley—a Huntsville minister before secession—with a message calling for the immediate surrender of the town.34 The reply from Granger en route to Huntsville, as related by his acting adjutant, Lt. Sam Kneeland of the 18th Michigan Infantry, was “come and take it as soon as you get ready.” Although Buford threatened “to attack . . . from every rock, house, tree and shrub in the vicinity,” he was denied the surrender. The Rebels skirmished with a blue cavalry company as they moved slowly west while one of Buford’s detachments destroyed track southwest of the town. Believing Decatur to be too well fortified, the general headed for Athens, unaware it had been reoccupied.35 On September 29 Maj. Will R. McBath’s two-hundred-man battalion of the 2nd Tennessee, along with three hundred Indiana troops, reoccupied the fort at Athens. The following day McBath’s men rode to Sulphur Branch trestle and returned with all of the wounded from both sides who could travel to Athens. On October 1 the battalion started to join the rest of the regiment at Huntsville but fell back to Athens when encountering one of Buford’s entire brigades. With about six hundred cavalry and an artillery battery, they fought the Rebels until dusk.36 33. Ibid., 547; Carter, First Regiment, 197; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 201. 34. Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 202; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 360; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 141; Dunnavant, Railroad War, 114–15; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 153–54. 35. OR, 39(1):516–17; Dunnavant, Railroad War, 115. 36. Dunnavant, Railroad War, 116–17.

Forrest on the Railroads

283

Buford renewed the attack the following morning. When a cannonball from his first round of shelling cut down the flagpole in the center of the fort, Sgt. Dick Hurak of Company I, 2nd Tennessee, “took the flag, mounted the top of the fort, and cried out, ‘Try it again, we are not whipped yet’ ”—words he shouted after each round until dazed and covered with “dirt and rubbish.” Finally Buford, under a flag of truce, demanded a surrender that was rejected. Soon thereafter the Federal battery made a direct strike on “a fine residence” near the fort, killing several graybacks. Buford, with his ammunition running low and Morgan moving toward him, had had enough. He moved west to meet Forrest at Cherokee Station.37 As the firing slackened, the 2nd Tennessee spread out from the fort and discovered that Buford had moved west. The Tennesseans remained until Morgan’s infantry arrived on October 3, after which they served as scouts as far as Florence. With an expedition of three thousand cavalrymen that came by water with General Hatch from Memphis, four companies of Hurst’s 6th Tennessee reported to Morgan at Shoal Creek. General Rousseau also arrived with about six thousand men. But the threat of Hood’s movement into North Georgia caused all the regiments to return quickly to their respective stations.38 Meanwhile at Meridian, Mississippi, guards separated officers of the 3rd Tennessee from their men: sending officers ten miles south to Enterprise, white enlisted men to Cahaba Prison in southern Alabama, and black soldiers to Mobile to be used as laborers at the salt works. Confederate major Edward Ward, a former Indiana resident in charge of Enterprise, granted his prisoners “the privilege of the town,” provided they “would not go outside its limits.” They received “a daily ration of cornmeal and sowbelly without salt,” all the sweet potatoes they wanted, and occasionally some “fine . . . whiskey.” Bored with idleness, but unwilling to risk a worse circumstance, many resorted to carving objects from roots with their pocketknives.39 On October 17, more than three weeks after their capture, the officers taken at Athens wrote a letter of protest against Colonel Campbell (a fellow prisoner) and his surrender of the fort. Their criticisms of his capitulation were the strength of the fort, the reluctance of the men and officers to surrender, and the pending arrival of reinforcements. About fifty miles south of Enterprise 37. Ibid., 117–18; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 142; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 155. 38. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 142–43; Dunnavant, Railroad War, 119. 39. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 150–51.

284

The Atlanta Campaign

was Jones County, a haven for draft evaders, deserters, and renegade Choctaws that had declared itself the Republic of Jones. Once when Major Ward heard that a band of the rascals threatened to attack his town to obtain U.S. greenbacks, he temporarily issued the prisoners muskets—but such an attack never occurred.40 Much the same circumstances confronted Forrest in late September that had confronted Wheeler earlier in his attempt to destroy railroads south of Nashville. His early victories in northern Alabama largely resulted from his overwhelming numbers against inexperienced leaders who were poor judges of when to hold and when to fold, much as he had encountered in West Tennessee during spring 1864. Campbell surrendered far too soon at Athens, with over 450 black infantrymen and 150 dismounted troopers of the 3rd Tennessee with carbines in a well-fortified fort with food for two days and plenty of ammunition. In contrast, Minnis had held on far too long at Sulphur Branch trestle after heavy losses and with little chance of success. When Union infantry and cavalry, including Spalding’s brigade (10th and 12th Tennessee) and the 1st and 4th Tennessee concentrated at Pulaski, Rousseau stopped Forrest, causing him to move toward Tullahoma and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. But finding Tullahoma too well fortified, Forrest divided his column, sending Buford south to capture Huntsville, and turned back to Spring Hill and Columbia. Once again he destroyed track and bridges until confronted by Rousseau, then fled across the Tennessee River. Meanwhile Buford met other Federals, including a battalion of the 2nd Tennessee at Huntsville, and at the reoccupied fort at Sulphur Branch trestle, both of which were denied him before he rejoined Forrest. Forrest’s raid into Middle Tennessee proved that his boldness, his cavalry’s cohesiveness, and his artillery under Captain Morton were far superior to Wheeler’s force. But as the Wizard of the Saddle reached the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, he faced the same obstacles as his predecessor—Yankee manpower, in Forrest’s case troops arriving from multiple locations in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia. George B. Guild, who rode with Wheeler, summed up the problem that finally forced the Confederates “to quit fighting after four years”: “When we lost a man, he was ‘dead for certain’ and worst 40. Ibid.; OR, (1):523–26.

Forrest on the Railroads

285

still none was to be had to stand in his place.” But the Yankees kept “calling to their aid the negroes and an immense foreign importation.” Many of these individuals of darker colors and different tongues, along with southern Tories, guarded the railroads while midwestern men and boys sought to take Atlanta.41 41. Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 223–32; Hubbard, Notes of a Private, 159; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 359; Hancock, Diary, 469–75; Guild, Fourth Tennessee, 40.

PART 5

The Nashville Campaign

”I broke up the separate [Tennessee] division [and] filled vacancies as they occurred . . . by assigning veterans of the same grade from Northern regiments. The plan worked well and soon brought the Tennessee cavalry . . . to a high state of efficiency.” Maj. Gen. James Harrison Wilson

Maj. Gen. James Harrison Wilson From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 18

North to Nashville

W

hen Sherman occupied Atlanta on September 2, Hood remained below the city. In early October he circled clockwise around the Union army. Sherman countered by shuffling detachments to North Georgia and Chattanooga. He deployed Thomas with his Army of the Cumberland to assume command in Middle Tennessee of a force eventually including nine divisions and four-fifths of Sherman’s cavalry. Then Sherman spent most of October pursuing Hood in northwestern Georgia before beginning his march to the sea in mid-November.1 Hood demonstrated in front of Decatur, Alabama, during late October before concentrating his army at Tuscumbia, close to Cherokee Station on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. He sent two divisions across on a pontoon bridge to Florence and waited for his new cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest. But Forrest was delayed by his amphibious raid on the port of Johnsonville, during which he ignited much of the facility’s huge store of supplies and ordnance. By the time Forrest had his troopers, in the words of one Confederate, “fairly well mounted and equipped,” it was mid-November. This delay enabled Thomas to collect and organize his force at Nashville.2 At Grant’s urging, during the final days of September 1864, Sherman appointed the twenty-seven-year-old James Harrison Wilson, former head of the U.S. Cavalry, as chief of cavalry of the Military Division of the Mississippi. The division included cavalrymen of the department’s three main field commands (the Armies of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio) in regi1. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:144–62. 2. B&L, 4:427; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 439–40; Thomas Robson Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign (New York, 1929), 57; J. P. Young, “Hood’s Failure at Spring Hill,” CV 16 (Jan. 1908), 25.

290

The Nashville Campaign

ments scattered from Southwest Missouri east to Knoxville and south to Atlanta. Grant predicted that the “slight . . . pinched fac[ed]” general would “add fifty percent to the effectiveness of [Sherman’s] cavalry.”3 In October Wilson visited Thomas in Nashville and Sherman at Gaylesville, Alabama. During that month he outfitted Kilpatrick’s cavalry at Marietta to accompany Sherman south. Perhaps reflecting the type of raid to Savannah that he had in mind, Sherman told Wilson, “I know Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of a man to command my cavalry on this expedition.” Wilson studied his other field commanders, inspected their regiments, and created a new organization for his Cavalry Corps. The “Boy Wonder” relieved the cavalry chiefs of the three armies—Stoneman, Elliott, and Grierson—and abolished their corps, giving himself, as he put it, “direct control.” He sent his dismounted men to quartermaster depots at Nashville and Louisville to be mounted and equipped.4 Reaching Nashville in early November, shortly before the presidential election, Wilson found Thomas, a former officer in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons, to be supportive of cavalry as more than a reconnaissance wing of the army. Both generals agreed about its use as an important arm in waging major battles, favoring the use of massed cavalry to reach the enemy’s rear, to hold important positions until infantry arrived, and to engage in pursuit.5 Wilson had only 4,300 cavalrymen ready for action along Hood’s likely route north to Nashville: General Hatch’s division of 2,500 men at Pulaski, initially en route to join Sherman in Georgia; Croxton’s brigade of 1,000 troopers, including Dyer’s 1st Tennessee at Shoal Creek near Florence; and Col. Horace Capron’s brigade of 800 horse soldiers west of Pulaski. On November 6 Hatch joined Croxton and took command near Florence; eight days later Capron moved west of Waynesboro.6 Wilson—who intended to abolish the all-Tennessee Fourth Division— assigned Spalding’s 10th and 12th Tennessee to Hatch’s division. Hatch sent those men needing to be remounted to Nashville and accompanied the rest to 3. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:4–5; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 930–31; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 160. 4. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:13, 19–21, 23; B&L, 4:465; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 162, 164. 5. B&L, 4:465; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 164–65; Francis F. McKinney, Education in Violence: The Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland (Detroit, 1961), 387. 6. B&L, 4:465; Wiley Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville (New York, 1992), 80–81.

North to Nashville

291

Pulaski. The 12th Tennessee had already received an order from Thomas “to establish a courier-line between Franklin and Columbia, to clear [that] part of the country of guerrillas, and to [be ready to] escort the train of [Schofield’s] 23rd Corps to Columbia.”7 Since October, Croxton had guarded the fords and ferries along the north bank of the Tennessee River for over twenty miles from Muscle Shoals to Florence. He kept Thomas informed by a courier line—“regularly threatened by bushwhackers”—to the nearest telegraph at Pulaski. Along with comrades from Kentucky and the Midwest, Dyer’s Tennesseans watched Hood’s troops as they searched for the safest ford. While they enjoyed savoring muscadines growing in “the rich bottoms,” mosquitoes caused them more misery than the occasional shots from bushwhackers and sharpshooters.8 Being unmolested for a week, Croxton—now behind Shoal Creek confluence with the river east of Florence—sent out pickets, followed by Dyer’s 1st Tennessee. They rode for three miles at dawn before encountering heavy fire from Hood’s infantry, now with two divisions at Florence, and retreating to their base. When two brigades forded the creek upstream and threatened his rear, Croxton retreated east near Sugar Creek. He was reinforced on November 6 by Hatch’s Fifth Division.9 That day Pvt. Robert Adair of Company C, 1st Tennessee, received his fifth wound of the war. Just as Croxton ordered the retreat, a musketball “struck [him] in the left breast [and] passed through his body.” With graycoats fewer than fifty yards away, Adair’s brother and two comrades dismounted to help the “brave and gallant soldier.” They lifted his bloody body, which felt “more dead than alive,” and boosted him behind his mounted brother. Then “amid a shower of lead,” they mounted and rode east with Robert, who survived into the next century.10 On November 8, soldiers at Sugar Creek, as elsewhere, voted for president. A large majority chose Lincoln over George McClellan on the Democratic Party ticket. Croxton’s brigade voted almost unanimously for Lincoln and Johnson. Union troops also guarded ballot boxes in a few occupied towns. 7. TICW, 1:346; OR, 45(1):928, 1099. 8. Carter, First Regiment, 200; Pierce, Second Iowa, 123–24; Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 57; OR, 39(3):524. 9. Pierce, Second Iowa, 124; Carter, First Regiment, 200–201; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 80–81, 87. 10. Carter, First Regiment, 198.

292

The Nashville Campaign

Tennesseans voted overwhelmingly for the Lincoln-Johnson ticket, but Congress disallowed the state’s electoral vote.11 During the next week Hatch sent detachments across Shoal Creek at least thrice to scout the enemy. While Hood waited for Forrest, Hatch pushed back gray pickets almost to Florence, blockaded roads with felled trees, and obstructed swollen fords by any feasible means. “Rain fell in torrents,” wrote one soldier, causing muddy roads and “quagmires” in camps. No shelter existed except for “gum blankets.” Men and beasts survived without food other than what troopers commandeered from the countryside’s poor people. Many horses contracted “greese heel” from minerals in the mud that softened their hooves.12 As the church bells of Florence pealed on the brilliantly lit Sunday morning of November 13, Hood’s army, in brigades four men abreast with their regimental flags waving in the breeze, crossed the Tennessee on a pontoon bridge. Col. Charles H. Olmstead of the 57th Georgia Infantry wrote that the men experienced “a sense of exhilaration in being a part of the brilliant spectacle.” Forrest’s corps totaled about five thousand troopers in three divisions under James Chalmers, Abraham Buford, and William Jackson. Each division covered one of Hood’s infantry corps advancing north by separate routes: the left wing via Waynesboro, the right wing via Lawrenceburg, and the center via country roads between the other two wings. They faced Schofield, headquartered at Pulaski, with divisions on the Nashville & Decatur Railroad at Pulaski, Lynnville, and Columbia.13 Falling back toward Shoal Creek on November 19, Hatch met Forrest in force. Now certain that Hood was moving due north, he galloped to Lawrenceburg. At dawn on the twenty-second, Forrest drove in the Federal pickets. Fighting continued throughout the morning with gray infantry and that afternoon as gray artillery arrived. Hatch retreated that evening in the sleet and snow. Learning the next day that Schofield had abandoned Pulaski, he turned northeast to Campbellsville, where he had eighty-four men captured before falling back to Lynnville. After his men received fire from neighborhood guerrillas, Hatch exacted revenge by having troopers of the 10th Tennessee torch most of the village’s thirty dwellings. Meanwhile Chalmers’s division, accom11. Ibid., 203–4. 12. Ibid., 204–5; Pierce, Second Iowa, 132–33; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 80–82. 13. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 471; Welcher, Union Army, 2:585–86; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 384; Olmstead, Memoirs, 162.

North to Nashville

293

panied by Forrest, advanced on the left by way of Waynesboro and began pushing Capron’s brigade northeast toward Columbia.14 After Hatch moved south from Nashville to Pulaski in mid-November, Col. George W. Bridges and part of his 10th Tennessee remained behind at Camp Webster. Bridges’s “neglect of his duty,” caused by heavy drinking, became the subject of a number of telegrams between Wilson and his adjutant general, Maj. E. B. Beaumont. The essence of Beaumont’s messages was that “[t]he commanding officer of the 10th Tennessee [Cavalry] has been very neglectful of his duty and it would be well to get rid of him.” Wilson responded, “You can arrest the colonel . . . and prefer charges against him.” The general instructed Beaumont to make an example of Bridges by having the colonel’s dismissal published for the Cavalry Corps, thereby “mak[ing] Camp Webster a disagreeable place for worthless officers.”15 Hatch and Croxton fell back slowly, preventing Forrest from cutting off Schofield’s infantry to the north and providing time for Wilson’s remounting operation at Nashville. On November 24 Hurst’s 6th Tennessee received orders “to proceed without delay to Nashville via the Cumberland River and to take with them their camp and garrison equipage.” That same day Wilson, now commanding in the field, started concentrating his cavalry at Columbia. He offered Hatch an opportunity to proceed to Nashville to remount. But “this did not suit [Hatch’s] fiery spirit,” wrote one trooper, and he obtained permission for squads to scour the countryside for horses northeast of Columbia. Hatch was able to seize enough horses to replace his afflicted mounts.16 On November 26 the 4th Tennessee and a surviving detachment of the 3rd Tennessee, altogether six hundred horsemen armed with sabers and Maynard carbines, left as part of Brig. Gen. John H. Hammond’s brigade for the front. Hammond’s brigade included Indiana and Pennsylvania cavalry, bringing its total strength to twelve hundred men “ready for duty.” His Federals carried five days of rations and forage. He hoped to reach Wilson at Columbia in two days.17 By November 28 Wilson had most of his cavalry deployed in detachments along the swollen Duck River. Hatch and Croxton spread along the Shelbyville 14. Welcher, Union Army, 2:586; Carter, First Regiment, 205–6; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 92. 15. PAJ, 6:644–45n; TICW, 1:346; OR, 45(1):924, 1022, 1040. 16. Pierce, Second Iowa, 136; Welcher, Union Army, 2:587. 17. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 70–71.

294

The Nashville Campaign

Pike six miles from Columbia, with Capron south of them on the Lewisburg Pike. That morning Forrest swung east of Columbia to cross at four widely separated fords, under orders from Hood to drive Wilson’s cavalry north so as “to cover the construction of the pontoon bridge” for the infantry. Although Forrest’s men had to swim their horses, they completed crossings at three points during the afternoon as well as drove enemy cavalry north of the river. When Buford’s division encountered strong resistance from Capron’s reinforced brigade of 1,800 men, reinforcements from Forrest enabled him to cross at dawn the next day. Forrest was on his home turf now, having been, as Wilson phrased it, “born and brought up in the Duck River country.” Forrest opened a path for the feet of Hood’s infantry. At least for a day he closed “the eyes and ears” of the enemy, Wilson’s cavalry.18 Meanwhile Wilson concentrated his scattered regiments at Hurt’s Corners, a crossroads on the macadamized Lewisburg Pike, where they barricaded the road and stopped Forrest’s advance for the day. Before dawn on November 29, Wilson fell back, with Capron’s brigade in the advance and Croxton’s in the rear, soon pursued by Forrest through a densely wooded area. As his main column rode north, Wilson had each brigade alternately riding as the rearguard, halting, dismounting, erecting barricades, and firing. When Croxton’s turn came, he asked the general if he intended to fight. “Only . . . to delay the enemy,” Wilson replied. Croxton responded, “Please get your ‘horse cavalry’ out of the way and give me a clear road!” Croxton dismounted several times, erected barricades, and beat back Forrest’s slow-moving advance before falling back.19 With the Rebel pursuit delayed by Wilson’s halt-fire-and-run tactics, Forrest—as he had planned—swung Chalmers’s division around the enemy’s flank to strike at the head of the Federal column. But galloping ahead, Capron’s brigade erected barricades at Mount Carmel Church, an important intersection where the road from Spring Hill to Murfreesboro crossed the pike from Lewisburg to Franklin. As he approached, Chalmers paused behind some ce18. Pierce, Second Iowa, 137; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:31; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 97–98; OR, 45(1):604; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 387; Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 105–6, 108; Thomas Robson Hay, “The Cavalry at Spring Hill,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 8 (Apr. 1924): 9–12; Young, “Spring Hill,” 25. 19. OR, 45(1):604; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 103, 105, 111; Jerry Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps Union Campaign in the Western Theatre, October 1864 through Spring 1865 (Jefferson, N.C., 1998), 54.

North to Nashville

295

dar trees outside the village, then charged arriving Federals twice before being repulsed. Forrest discontinued chasing Wilson, hoping instead to get behind Schofield’s infantry via another road to Spring Hill.20 At Spring Hill Forrest confronted the 12th Tennessee, about 250 strong and commanded by Lt. Col. Charles C. Hoefling. The regiment had been detached to operate a courier line between Columbia and Spring Hill as well as to provide pickets at Spring Hill. Before the 12th’s sentries received fire from Forrest’s advance, Hoefling had his hands full with General Stanley’s wagon train moving through town toward Franklin.21 Hoefling fashioned a mix of cavalry from his 12th Tennessee, the 3rd Illinois, three companies of the 11th Indiana Cavalry, and a stray company of the 2nd Michigan and formed a line of battle two miles south and east of the town. They delayed Forrest long enough for Stanley to arrive with his infantry before 2:00 p.m., then the combined force kept the pike to Franklin open for the withdrawal of Schofield’s main army from Columbia. During the battle Hoefling was wounded, Maj. Sater Boland fell mortally wounded, and Capt. John M. Jordan of Company F lost his left arm.22 That same day (the twenty-ninth), Wilson forged ahead to establish his headquarters east of Franklin at Douglas Church. There he consolidated his cavalry arriving from the south and from Nashville. General Hammond, recently at Nashville, arrived with two regiments of his brigade (the 4th Tennessee and the 9th Indiana) riding rested horses. That night, after sending most of the cavalry north of the Harpeth River, Wilson’s and Hammond’s regiments reconnoitered south of the river on the Lewisburg Pike. Failing to find the enemy, Wilson withdrew and sent Hammond to Triune on the Nolensville Pike.23 Wilson sent Croxton with the 2nd Michigan and 1st Tennessee south of the Harpeth River to guard the Lewisburg Pike, four miles southeast of Franklin, directly in the path of Forrest’s cavalry. Croxton also covered the right flank of Schofield’s infantry marching from Spring Hill to Franklin. By 10:00 a.m. the next day, his detachment blocked Forrest’s dismounted advance guard between the pike and the river. That afternoon, responding to a reported threat 20. Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 111–12; OR, 45(1):558, 559, 588; Carter, First Regiment, 209–10; Hay, “Cavalry at Spring Hill,” 13; Young, “Spring Hill,” 28–29. 21. Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 117–18; OR, 45(1) 1070; RAGT, 603. 22. OR, 45(1):248; Dinkins, Furl That Banner, 229–30; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 118–19. 23. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 71.

296

The Nashville Campaign

to his right flank, Croxton retreated a mile and a half north to a wooded area near McGavock’s Ford. His cavalrymen barricaded the Lewisburg Pike with rails from nearby fences and repulsed an assault of mounted and dismounted troopers. The Federals charged them into the woods only to discover a strong force of enemy infantry. They then galloped back to their line and crossed the ford to the north side of the Harpeth.24 Later that afternoon Wilson sent Hatch’s division two miles south to Hughes Ford to prevent a crossing by Jackson’s Rebel division. He also had Croxton move down near the river’s bank to attack the enemy’s left flank. As Hatch drew near the graybacks, he ordered his men to dismount and march toward the river. Outnumbering Jackson’s 2,500-man division and outgunning it with their Spencers, Hatch’s Federals drove the Rebels back into the water and south of the Harpeth before Croxton arrived. Throughout the rest of the day, Wilson’s cavalry prevented Forrest’s cavalry from crossing the Harpeth, thereby, Schofield wrote, “render[ing his] immediate left and rear secure.”25 Meanwhile at Franklin, a town nestled in a bend below the Harpeth River, Schofield’s well-entrenched and well-positioned artillery and infantry repulsed a charge by Hood that cost the Confederates heavy casualties and the loss of six generals and six thousand troops. After Schofield’s great victory, he withdrew his infantry across the Harpeth toward Nashville, ordering Wilson to cover the rear and guard the flanks. Some of the Union cavalry, including the 4th Tennessee, rode toward Murfreesboro to guard the railroad to Nashville. Near Brentwood Buford’s division attacked Col. Robert R. Stewart’s brigade of Hatch’s division, including the 10th Tennessee Cavalry, which halted to eat and delayed too long in moving out.26 From Brentwood Wilson’s cavalry traveled by several roads to consolidate at Thomson’s Chapel on the Nolensville Pike, two miles from Nashville. Sending their horses to the rear, the men erected “works across the turnpike,” received a “fresh supply of ammunition,” and awaited the enemy. But only picket fire occurred. At dawn the following day, they took positions on the left of General Thomas’s main line, occupying the area from the Murfreesboro Pike east to the Cumberland River. On December 3 Steedman’s infantry division—up 24. Carter, First Regiment, 214–15; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 174; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 168; OR, 45(1):753. 25. OR, 45(1):573; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 168; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 398. 26. Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 399; Cox, March to the Sea, 81–98; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 72.

North to Nashville

297

from Chattanooga with one white and two black brigades—relieved Wilson’s cavalry in the rifle pits.27 General Schofield’s initial report on Wilson’s cavalry was critical, especially concerning when the infantry commander approached Franklin on November 29. He wrote that—perhaps stemming from his own feelings of insecurity—Wilson had left his “immediate flank and rear . . . insecure” and his “communication with Nashville” unprotected. But upon reflection, and perhaps in light of subsequent events, Schofield later commented favorably on Wilson’s cavalry and its support of his army from Pulaski to Nashville, especially in providing him military intelligence. “During the operation,” he wrote, Wilson’s cavalry was “far out in front or on the flank . . . , giving me information of vital importance.” Schofield did not at any time, he recalled, ever “suffer any inconvenience from lack of information that cavalry could possibly give.”28 At Nashville Wilson ordered the cavalry to the north side of the Cumberland River. For several days he rested his men, reshod his horses, and resupplied and reorganized his corps. He also stationed units at the crossings below and above Nashville to prevent Forrest from severing Thomas’s line of communication with Louisville. Wilson sent Hammond’s brigade up the river to Gallatin to watch for Forrest, who was then near Murfreesboro. For a few days Hammonds left Major Blackman’s 2nd Battalion, 4th Tennessee near a ferry on the Cumberland. There the Tennesseans remained for two weeks guarding the ferry and impressing horses from nearby farms.29 Wilson devoted his attention to collecting cavalrymen and impressing horses throughout Tennessee and Kentucky as authorized by Secretary of War Stanton. His detached squads “spar[ed] no man’s horses provided they were fit for cavalry service,” including those that pulled the carriage of Governor Johnson, the vice president–elect. Other horses seized in urban areas were those of Louisville “street-car companies and [traveling] circuses.” Cavalrymen also flocked to Nashville. Some arrived from distant posts and others from furloughs. In only a week Wilson reported “12,000 men, mounted, armed, and equipped,” and another 3,000 dismounted.30 27. Carter, First Regiment, 220–21; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 38. 28. OR, 45(1):343; John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army (New York, 1897), 227; Hay, “Cavalry at Spring Hill,” 21–23. 29. B&L, 4:467; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 73. 30. Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 180–82; B&L, 467.

298

The Nashville Campaign

The general’s management of the cavalry hurtled him into conflict with Governor Johnson. The governor had limited authority over the state’s twentyone mounted regiments, representing on paper about one-fourth of Wilson’s command. By reputation the general knew the Tennesseans to be undisciplined. Earlier, as chief of the Cavalry Bureau in Washington, he had opposed Johnson’s creation of the twelve-month mounted infantry regiments. Now he found it “a great disappointment to find these regiments under [his] command.”31 Wilson claimed that of the state’s cavalrymen, “less than half of the officers and men were present with the colors,” attributing this to their being stationed where “they could easily get home.” That half of them were at home is questionable. Some convalesced in army hospitals, others were captured by Forrest, a few scouted with detachments, and a handful had recruiting assignments. Some—being dismounted—lacked transportation to Nashville. By now Wilson had broken up General Gillem’s division, recently commanded by Colonel Spalding. Since Johnson had earlier sent Gillem and three regiments (the so-called Governor’s Guard) to East Tennessee, they were off limits for the time being, with Thomas’s consent.32 Reorganization originated earlier with the dismissal of three individual cavalry chiefs and the naming of new division commanders directly responsible to Wilson. The next step was the creation of brigades and the assignment of regiments to those brigades. For the Tennessee regiments, with the exception of Gillem’s Governor’s Guard, this mainly occurred after mid-November with the creation of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Divisions. They were respectively commanded by Brig. Gens. Edward Hatch, Richard W. Johnson, and Joseph F. Knipe.33 Wilson next dealt with the state’s “untrained and inefficient” officers. Some he found to be “drunken rowdies.” He dismissed a few and had others courtmartialed. A number of politicians had been fair recruiters but turned out to be poor officers. Wilson devised ways to purify the officers’ ranks, but he needed the cooperation of the governor, “who had appointing power,” to name new officers. After being frigidly received by Johnson, Wilson proved—at a later personal cost once Johnson became president—to be as stubborn as the 31. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 1:334, 2:103. 32. Ibid. 33. TICW, 1:323, 326, 328, 332, 336, 346, 350.

North to Nashville

299

governor. At one point in their conversation, Wilson recklessly told him that he came believing the Tennessean to be “a statesman and a patriot.” Now he was “sorry” to say that he found him to be “merely a politician of the common sort.” Following that incendiary encounter, Wilson could only fill “vacancies as they occurred, whether from court-martial or otherwise, by assigning veterans of the same grade from Northern regiments.” The general believed that he “brought the Tennessee cavalry . . . to a high state of efficiency.” But Johnson considered some of his actions insulting to Tennesseans and “never quite forgave [him].”34 Actually at the regimental-command level, few changes occurred other than for Major Story replacing Colonel Bridges and Spalding returning to the 12th Tennessee, a move for which Wilson would later congratulate himself. Other commanders had been in place for months or—as in the cases of Cook, Hurst, and Jacob Thornburgh—for years. Although the general probably wanted to replace others with officers from northern units—as he suggested he did—this did not happen.35 On November 17 Wilson assigned the 5th Tennessee to General Johnson’s Sixth Division, but it took two weeks for General Milroy at Tullahoma, under whose command it had been serving, to collect the scattered regiment from outposts and scouting details. On November 27 Milroy sent its commander, Maj. John F. Armstrong—recently “out in bushwhacking country with [a] small . . . force”—with all the men of the 5th “that could be raised for duty.” He directed Armstrong to order “scouts on the roads [to] the west and northwest” to look for Hood and Forrest. That same day he ordered Capt. Robert E. Cain and his detachment in from McMinnville. Soon thereafter Milroy moved with about three thousand troops to Murfreesboro, settling northwest of town at Fortress Rosecrans. Here General Rousseau, down from Nashville, commanding eighteen hundred green infantrymen, had been reinforced by about another three thousand from northern Alabama commanded by General Granger.36 Hood had sent Forrest’s cavalry (except for Chalmers’s division) and Maj. Gen. William B. Bate’s infantry division between Nashville and Murfreesboro, the latter lying back of the Confederacy’s right. Forrest severed commu34. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 80–81; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 1:334, 2:103. 35. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:103. 36. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 50–51; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 293.

300

The Nashville Campaign

nication lines to Murfreesboro, attacked blockhouses near Nashville, and enticed the enemy to leave the safety of Fortress Rosecrans. Rousseau deployed detachments of the 5th Tennessee as scouts and guides. One squad reported an attack on the Overall Creek blockhouse five miles north of Murfreesboro on December 4. When Rousseau sent Milroy out with three infantry regiments to rescue the blockhouse, Milroy found to his dismay a large infantry force backing Forrest’s cavalry and returned to Fortress Rosecrans.37 Early on December 7 Rousseau sent Milroy out again, this time with seven infantry regiments, a detachment of the 5th, and a six-gun battery—altogether 3,325 soldiers. Milroy divided his force into two brigades to reconnoiter on roads to the southwest. On the Salem Pike about 10:00 a.m., the 5th’s detachment, riding in the advance, “struck the rebel vedette” and then across Stones River 300 of Forrest’s cavalry, repulsed by Milroy with artillery. Near Wilkinson Pike Milroy attacked another unit of Rebel cavalry and pursued it for half a mile, capturing several prisoners, a battle flag, and two pieces of artillery.38 Two miles from town, Milroy ran into Bate’s line of battle but resisted a direct assault. Instead, led by his cavalry, he turned into a wooded area before charging the Rebels’ left flank, forcing them to emerge from behind their makeshift barricades. Fully half of the veterans who had seen the slaughter at Franklin panicked. Forrest pled with the infantry to persevere long enough for him to get his cavalry to Milroy’s rear. But it was not to be. Forrest later reported that the infantry “made a shameful retreat.” Although he “seized the colors of the retreating troops and endeavored to rally them,” as did General Bate, the soldiers “could not be moved by any entreaty or appeal to their patriotism.”39 When the Federals began to run low on ammunition and Forrest’s cavalry appeared, Milroy withdrew into the fortress. Altogether he had captured 207 prisoners, two pieces of artillery, and the battle flags of 1st and 3rd Florida Infantry Regiments. Milroy suffered only a handful of casualties, including two wounded from the 5th Tennessee. Shortly after this Hood ordered Bate’s infantry to join him outside Nashville, and Forrest had to spare Buford’s division 37. Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 295. 38. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 51–52; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 296; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 486–87. 39. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 487; OR, 45(1):614–20; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 283; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 403–4.

North to Nashville

301

to guard the south bank of the Upper Cumberland. This reduced Forrest’s mission to holding the Federals inside Fortress Rosecrans.40 Sherman’s appointment of Wilson as cavalry chief in late September 1864 largely meant the end of Governor Johnson’s dream of operating an independent state military force to protect unionists and enforce his policies. With the exception of Gillem’s brigade in East Tennessee, Wilson placed other Tennessee regiments into other units under his command. He largely ignored the developing one-year mounted infantry regiments, other than to deprive them of resources. As part of Croxton’s brigade (and never a part of Gillem’s Fourth Division), Dyers’s 1st Tennessee served along the Tennessee River during October 1864 before being reinforced by Hatch’s Fifth Division (including the 10th and 12th Tennessee) in early November. There they faced Forrest in mid-November as Hood moved toward Nashville, falling back as circumstances demanded. Later that month the 4th Tennessee and a surviving detachment of the 3rd Tennessee left for the front as part of Hammond’s brigade. On November 24 Wilson, now in command in the field, began concentrating his cavalry at Columbia, where after Forrest crossed the Duck River, Wilson pursued a halt-fire-and-run tactical withdrawal. At Spring Hill Hoefling’s 12th Tennessee, along with cavalry detachments from other Yankee regiments, delayed Forrest long enough for Stanley’s infantry to arrive. Meanwhile Wilson rode ahead to establish his headquarters east of Franklin. There his cavalry guarded the left flank of the Union army by preventing a crossing of the Harpeth River by Forrest, while Schofield scored a major victory by repulsing Hood’s futile charge. Thereafter Wilson’s cavalry served as Schofield’s rearguard into Nashville. At the capital Wilson ordered his cavalry north of the Cumberland River, where his horsemen—including the Tennesseans— rested, retooled, impressed horses, and guarded Thomas’s flanks along the riverbanks. Of the twenty-two Civil War battles with total casualties exceeding six thousand, five occurred in or near Tennessee: Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Franklin. Although initially on the defensive in these battles—a distinct advantage—Confederate generals engaged in several risky assaults, resulting partly from public demands for victory as well as 40. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 488,

302

The Nashville Campaign

what the great authority on Civil War casualties, Thomas Livermore, called “the greater impetuosity of the Southern temperament.” Union cavalry did not come into play at Shiloh and Chattanooga, but it fought (albeit mainly on the perimeters) at Stones River, Chickamauga, and Franklin. All of these battles had consequences for Union cavalry, even Shiloh’s aftermath as it ripened conditions for the rise of partisan and guerrilla bands that produced the need for opposing cavalry. Stones River produced the circumstances that demonstrated a further need for cavalry as scouts, pickets, guards, and escorts, and its aftermath allowed the time to organize a larger and better mounted force. The significance of Franklin for Union cavalry lay more in the weakening of the Confederate army that the Federal horsemen would meet head on in the Battle of Nashville. An already demoralized and depleted foe was to some degree easier for all Union soldiers, including cavalrymen, to drive back across the Tennessee River.41 41. Grady McWhiney, “Who Whipped Whom? Confederate Defeat Reexamined,” in Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, ed. John T. Hubbell (Westport, Conn., 1975), 275–82 (Libermore quote, 279).

CHAPTER 19

The Battle of Nashville

T

he Nashville of 1864 sat entirely in the bend of the Cumberland River. Two lines of defense ran in semicircles roughly two miles apart, cutting across the main pikes from west to east: the Charlotte, Harding, Hillsboro, Granny White, Franklin, Nolensville, and Murfreesboro. Within the interior defense line stood three main forts and a chain of other bastions. At the exterior line the pikes—running west, southwest, and south—measured on average about two miles apart. The setting resembled half of a wheel facing out from the river: with a hub (the city); spokes (the pikes); and rim (the exterior defense line). Beyond this General Wilson had cavalry stationed along the Cumberland above and below Nashville to prevent enemy cavalry from breaking the Union line of supply from Louisville.1 With the full backing of General Thomas, Wilson readied his cavalry at Edgefield. For the first time all horsemen had seven-shot repeating rifles. Both generals thought (as events later proved) that horsemen would be vital to crushing Hood’s forces. Lincoln and Secretary Stanton urged Thomas to attack immediately. But he delayed, and General in Chief Grant threatened to relieve him. Once Thomas finally felt ready, an ice storm with temperatures plunging to ten degrees below zero hit northern Middle Tennessee on December 9, rendering movement hazardous. Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox—commander of the Third Division, XXIII Corps—later recalled that “men and horses were seen falling whenever they attempted to move” and that the scene provided a “constant” source of “entertainment.”2 1. Stanley F. Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville (Baton Rouge, 1956), 24–30; Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 507–8. 2. Horn, Battle of Nashville, 58; Jacob D. Cox, Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1900), 2:352–53; Pierce, Second Iowa, 140.

304

The Nashville Campaign

Only four regiments of Tennessee Union cavalry (1st, 4th, 10th, and 12th) would be fully engaged in the Battle of Nashville and the pursuit of Hood during the last half of December 1864. A few companies of other regiments (2nd, 3rd, and 6th) would serve as support units. Gillem had some regiments (8th, 9th, and 13th) with him in East Tennessee. The 5th, with General Milroy at Murfreesboro, participated only in a sideshow of the main event. Prosser’s brigade at Decatur became involved largely after the pursuit ended by attacking wagon trains of Hood’s depleted force.3 When the ice storm broke at Nashville on December 12, Thomas ordered Wilson’s 12,000-man Cavalry Corps with its 9,000 horses across the Cumberland from Edgefield. Hatch’s and Johnson’s men rode over a pontoon bridge, while Knipe’s and Croxton’s men slogged over the railroad bridge planked for the occasion. The cavalry eventually assumed a position on Thomas’s right, west of the city between Charlotte and Harding pikes, behind Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith’s infantry corps, down from St. Louis. During the positioning of troops, hundreds of horses fell with their riders. Sgt. W. R. Carter wrote that “the horses could not draw the artillery and wagons over the slippery surface.” Thomas delayed his attack until the roads improved. Wilson explained to his division commanders on the afternoon of the fourteenth that the cavalry would advance on Smith’s right by ten o’clock the next morning toward Hood’s left rear.4 General Thomas planned to destroy the Army of Tennessee by assaulting the enemy’s line along Hillsboro Pike, pushing it back west to east onto its own troops, and then getting Wilson’s cavalry, followed by Union infantry, south behind the enemy’s route of escape. Despite a dense early morning fog on the fifteenth and a blunder by Smith’s corps by cutting in front of Wilson’s cavalry, the horsemen stood ready to advance on the infantry’s right by ten o’clock. Hatch’s division, with Story’s 10th Tennessee and Spalding’s 12th Tennessee, stood dismounted on the front line, its horses held by designated squads to the rear. On the second line stood General Knipe’s division, including the 4th Tennessee, in support.5 3. TICW, 1:320–53; ORS, 65:413–623; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 200–220. 4. Horn, Battle of Nashville, 76–80; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:109; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 98; Cox, March to the Sea, 104–6; Carter, First Regiment, 225; OR, 45(2):155. 5. McKinney, Education in Violence, 409; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:110–11; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 99–100; Welcher, Union Army, 2:604; Pierce, Second Iowa, 142–43.

The Battle of Nashville

305

Hatch surged forward simultaneously with Smith’s infantry down Harding Pike, “wheeling gradually to the left,” pushing away gray pickets, and driving the enemy beyond Belle Meade, where the Hardings had “hospitably entertained” General Chalmers and his staff since their arrival. Within sight of the plantation manor near Richland Creek, Spalding’s regiment charged a wagon train, capturing forty-three prisoners and fourteen wagons carrying “Chalmers’s headquarters, baggage, papers, and records.”6 As Hatch’s troopers and Smith’s infantry swung southeast, they confronted five redoubts—each with two to six pieces of artillery with infantry support— and a long stonewall between Redoubts No. 3 and No. 4 on the east side of Hillsboro Pike. A combination of dismounted cavalry and infantry vied with each other throughout the daylight hours to take the works, often captured by a mixed force of both. After occupying Redoubt No. 5, troopers “disregarded company and regimental organization” and the entire brigade was mixed “like a crowd of school-boys.” At each redoubt an artillery battle of an hour or more waged as the troops moved forward. The horse soldiers often “fell . . . exhausted” and “then crawled upon their hands and knees up [a] steep bluff.” But as the Confederates began to give way, bluecoats charged the redoubts, taking each in turn: Redoubt No. 5 shortly after noon, No. 4 about two o’clock, then the others between three and five o’clock. Unaccustomed to being afoot, the dismounted cavalrymen found themselves at a disadvantage, but they added tremendous firepower with their Spencer carbines.7 Croxton’s brigade waited to the right of Hatch’s division that morning near the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad. Then Croxton moved his mounted regiments to the southwest between the railroad and Charlotte Pike. When he crossed Richland Creek, a Rebel battery on the pike shelled his men. But before the general could adequately respond, Wilson ordered him to support Brig. Gen. Richard W. Johnson—fighting Chalmers with Col. Edmund Rucker’s brigade—on Charlotte Pike. With Dyer’s 1st Tennessee in the advance, Croxton skirmished much of the way. When his brigade received fire after dark from behind one of the area’s familiar stonewalls, he ordered Dyer to attack. Dyer cried “forward!” His troopers yelled and despite heavy fire jumped the 6. Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 326–27; OR, 45(1):599–600; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 103–4; Dinkins, Furl That Banner, 243; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 639. 7. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:111–12; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 74; TICW, 1:324, 328, 336, 346; Pierce, Second Iowa, 143–44.

306

The Nashville Campaign

wall and captured some graybacks of the 5th Mississippi Cavalry as other Rebels from nearby woods fell back.8 Knipe, initially held in reserve, received instructions from Wilson that afternoon that if Hatch broke the gray line, he should circle around him to the enemy’s rear. At dusk on Harding Pike, Hatch pierced the line in a charge that claimed the life of Maj. William P. Story, commanding the 10th Tennessee. As ordered, Knipe sent Hammond’s brigade past Hatch’s division. Riding east, Hammond passed Hillsboro Pike six miles out from Nashville and reached Granny White Pike. Here he blockaded the road just beyond Granny White’s Tavern and bivouacked for the night. Meanwhile Knipe’s dismounted Second Brigade marched to Hillsboro Pike and took a position to defend that route before encamping for the evening. Wilson bivouacked his entire cavalry except for Hammond’s brigade along the Hillsboro Pike.9 Summing up his first day’s fighting, Wilson wrote that his cavalry “had driven back the enemy’s entire left wing an average of over four miles.” Moreover it “had placed itself in a position from which it was enabled to renew the attack.” His men were in “the left and rear of the enemy’s position, six miles from Nashville” and held “a firm grip on the Harding and Hillsborough turnpikes.” At sunrise he believed that they would be “ready to press on toward the Granny White turnpike.” Wilson knew his cavalry had achieved a number of firsts on any of his country’s battlefields. It had amassed an entire corps of horsemen on the flank of an enemy army, made a successful turning movement against a well-fortified infantry, and marched along with infantry to assault the enemy’s entrenchments. Then it had moved itself “in force behind the enemy’s flanks on one of his main lines of retreat.”10 The next day, because of hilly and wooded terrain, Wilson marched his troops dismounted toward the enemy. Before midday Col. Datus E. Coon’s brigade, with Spalding’s 12th Tennessee in the advance, crossed the Granny White Pike—from which Hammond’s brigade had returned—and repulsed the enemy. He then began the difficult task of occupying the hills through which the pike runs. Steep hills covered with trees and underbrush slowed the progress of his men as they marched hundreds abreast. Observing the slowness, Coon ordered two or three regiments at a time to concentrate and take individual hills and then to repeat the process again and again. To Coon’s front, 8. Carter, First Regiment, 228–30. 9. Welcher, Union Army, 2:607. 10. B&L, 4:468; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:112–13.

The Battle of Nashville

307

guarding Hood’s left rear, was Chalmers’s cavalry. With reinforcements from the infantry, Chalmers’s horsemen stopped Coon. But supporting regiments of Federals continually arrived. Stephens’s 4th Tennessee of Hammond’s brigade, engaging the enemy for the first time in the battle, “fought [for] six hours and fifteen minutes.” That afternoon, as Hatch got artillery in place to assist Coon, Chalmers retreated toward Brentwood on the Franklin Pike. From there Hood’s entire army soon took flight.11 About four o’clock a Union infantry charge caught many graybacks between enemy foot soldiers and dismounted cavalry to their rear. This caused the Rebels to flee in “confusion.” But pursuit by Wilson’s cavalry proved difficult as their horses were corralled one-half to three-quarters of a mile to the rear. Croxton, nearest the horses, mounted as soon as possible and rode down Granny White, which branched into Franklin Pike, on through Brentwood. Others followed; each, wrote Wilson, “vying with the other for the advance” toward the Rebel column retreating down the Franklin Pike.12 At Brentwood Chalmers received a dispatch sent much earlier by Hood, ordering him to hold the Granny White Pike. He thus directed Colonel Rucker and most of his brigade to gallop back to that road and delay the enemy. Beyond Little Harpeth River, Rucker erected barricades of fence rails and positioned his troops. Soon he confronted unknown riders, who he thought might be his own stragglers. On his white horse with saber in hand, the colonel edged up to a man shouting orders. He asked, “Who are you?” The man responded, “An officer of the 12th Tennessee.” Realizing he was not among friends, Rucker swung at the rider’s head, landed a glancing blow, and lost his balance and his blade. As the colonel strove to regain his balance, the dazed Union officer, Capt. Joseph C. Boyer, commanding Company L, 12th Tennessee, drew his own sword. But Rucker grasped it from him with his bare hand before regaining control of his saddle and his horse and riding toward the barricade. Mincing no words Boyer shouted, “Shoot the man on the white horse!” Rucker galloped only a few yards before a shot shattered his left elbow, his horse threw him, and he became a prisoner of war.13 Coon’s 9th Illinois and 12th Tennessee then engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Rucker’s brigade in the rain and darkness. Chalmers wrote that “it 11. OR, 45(1):591; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 363–64. 12. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:117–18; B&L, 4:469. 13. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:122–23; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 388–89; Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 492–95; Dinkins, Furl That Banner, 249; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 641–42.

308

The Nashville Campaign

was impossible to reform the men, or indeed to distinguish between friend and foe, so closely were they mingled together.” Eventually the Confederates extricated themselves from the chaos and outran their pursuers down the Franklin Pike. By then all the Rebels clearly were on the run. That night in the cold rain, General Thomas recognized Wilson riding at a distance. Galloping closer to him, the old cavalryman from days gone by yelled: “Dang it to hell, Wilson, didn’t I tell you we could lick ‘em?”14 Still Wilson realized that with Chalmers’s help, Hood’s army had “swept by the danger-point.” He decided to delay any further pursuit. His men and their mounts were exhausted, the night was dark and rainy, and a storm blew in about ten o’clock. Wilson bivouacked with Hatch, Croxton, and Knipe on the Granny White Pike while Johnson’s men camped on the Hillsboro Pike.15 During the two days of fighting at Nashville, Wilson’s cavalry had 329 casualties: 36 killed, 270 wounded, and 23 missing. Most of these casualties occurred in capturing the redoubts. The 329 represented 11 percent of the total Union casualties. Being on the defensive, the Confederates may not have lost more than 1,500 killed or wounded, but they had almost 4,500 men captured.16 On December 17 General Thomas ordered Hatch and Knipe to pursue Hood down the Franklin Pike and Johnson to support his army’s right. After being delayed while riding over a rough country road leading into the pike, Hatch fell in behind Knipe’s three thousand troopers, accompanied by Wilson. About ten-thirty that morning they neared Franklin. The last of the graycoats except for a rearguard were crossing a pontoon bridge on the Harpeth River. A battery on a high hill maintained watch over them. Hammond—whose brigade had captured seventy-five stragglers—ordered Major Stephens of the 4th Tennessee to “cross the river, charge into the town, and . . . gain the rear of the battery.” Skirmishing occurred after Stephens’s horsemen crossed the river and approached the guns before their defenders galloped away. James Goodwin of the 4th Tennessee later wrote: “We swam the river, killing four and capturing several, among them several sick and wounded,” no doubt from the battle of November 30.17 Wilson instructed Hatch and Knipe to follow the Columbia Pike, Johnson 14. B&L, 4:469–70. 15. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:125. 16. OR, 45(2):220–21. 17. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 113–14; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 395–96; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 40.

The Battle of Nashville

309

to take Carter’s Creek Pike to the southwest, and Croxton to move southeast on the Lewisburg Pike. Wilson knew that whatever fighting occurred would be left to his cavalry because by now the Harpeth had become too swollen for the Union infantry to cross. But he felt that he had “the Rebels on a great skedaddle.” Still, as General Johnson recalled, “swollen streams . . . favored Hood’s escape” as his army destroyed bridges, delaying the bluecoats.18 Within two hours Hatch and Knipe attacked the Rebel rearguard on the Columbia Pike. Wilson sent Hammond on the left and Coon on the right to get around the enemy’s flanks. Then he ordered his own escort of two hundred men of the 4th U.S. Cavalry to charge down the pike. Enemy lines gave way on all sides, and the graycoats crossed the West Harpeth River, followed by some of Wilson’s cavalry. But the pursuit ended around ten o’clock that night in darkness and confusion. The Federals were out of rations and exhausted from three days of fighting. Meanwhile their pontoon train had taken the wrong route because a sleepy Thomas had misspoken by ordering it to the “Murfreesboro pike.”19 Before noon on December 18, Wilson’s horsemen occupied Spring Hill, but they halted south of the town, men and mounts alike exhausted and hungry, without food or forage. While resting they received unwelcomed news: Forrest had arrived from Murfreesboro to take command of the enemy’s rearguard, now composed of his three thousand cavalrymen plus nineteen hundred infantrymen under Maj. Gen. Edward C. Walthall and eight artillery pieces of Morton’s command. The following day Hood ordered his artillery and wagon trains ahead of his infantry, and Forrest created his rearguard unit. Now the retreat, “a march [with] few parallels in the war for downright hardship and suffering,” thought Colonel Olmstead of the 57th Georgia, became the sole concern of Hood and his men.20 On December 20 Wilson ordered Johnson and Knipe’s divisions back to Nashville. He felt that they needed “to gather up and remount their foot brigades as soon as possible.” Summing up his situation, Capt. Orlando H. Sheaver of Hurst’s Company I, 6th Tennessee wrote that his men “[p]ursued the enemy 18. D. W. Sanders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” CV 15 (Sept. 1907): 401; R. W. Johnson, Soldier’s Reminiscences, 291. 19. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 115–16; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:131–33; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 397–400; OR, 45(1):553, 565–66, 696. 20. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 118; OR, 45(1):161; Scott Walker, Hell’s Broke Loose in Georgia (Athens, Ga., 2005), 210–11; Olmstead, Memoirs, 168.

310

The Nashville Campaign

to near Springhill when we went back, reached Nashville on the 21st, Wet, Cold, Hungry and Pised.” Wilson continued south on the twentieth with the commands of Hatch, Croxton, and Hammond. That day Hatch’s regiments built a makeshift “floating bridge from the debris of the railroad bridge” and crossed Rutherford Creek to take the lead toward Columbia, where all the bridges had been destroyed. After the last of Hood’s wagons left that morning through the freezing rain and Hatch started shelling the town, Forrest rode out to what remained of the Spring Hill Pike bridge with a flag of truce. He shouted across to Hatch that Hood’s army had already evacuated and that the shells would only hurt innocent civilians and the wounded. He also proposed an exchange of prisoners. Hatch agreed to stop the firing but could not agree—on Thomas’s orders—to the exchange of prisoners.21 Construction of the Federals’ pontoon bridge across the Duck River that began on December 22 was completed two days later. Croxton’s brigade led the advance of Thomas’s army on Christmas Eve, followed by other regiments of Wilson’s cavalry. His men engaged a few skirmishers near Lynnville. But when Croxton approached Richland Creek seven miles north of Pulaski, Forrest had his entire cavalry command on the south bank and all but two of his six artillery pieces placed near the bridge to oppose the Federals. Now and later, Walthall’s foot soldiers marched slowly until threatened, then they formed a line of battle, causing the enemy to dismount, do likewise, and dispatch skirmishers. This maneuver delayed the pursuit, Forrest’s goal. As Croxton pushed forward, Wilson had Hatch go east to get on the Rebels’ right flank, but Forrest fell back to Pulaski. During the engagement at Richland Creek, Cpl. Harrison Collins of Company A, 1st Tennessee galloped across the enemy’s line, shot “a rebel major, trying to rally his men, routed his [soldiers], and secured the flag” of Chalmers’s headquarters before returning to his line. For this daring feat, Congress awarded the Sneedville native the Medal of Honor. In this engagement Confederate general Buford was severely wounded.22 21. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 137–38; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 410–11; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 413; OR, 45(1):135; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 119–20; 13th Tennessee CSR; Dinkins, Furl That Banner, 252; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 646; Sanders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” 401. 22. Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 416–17; Carter, First Regiment, 241, 275; OR, 45(1):159–60; Sanders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” 403. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 120–21; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 294; U.S. Congress, Medal of Honor Recipients, 1863–1978 (Washington, 1979), 60; Sanders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” 403; Olmstead, Memoirs, 170.

The Battle of Nashville

311

On Christmas morning Wilson’s cavalry approached Pulaski. His advance extinguished the burning covered bridge over Richland Creek north of the town. Riding on it found the town abandoned and the ashes of “a huge bonfire in the public square” where Forrest had burned the supplies left behind by Hood. That afternoon seven miles south of Pulaski, with Johnson’s First Brigade under Thomas Harrison in advance, the Federals fell into a trap set by Forrest near Anthony’s Hill. Encountering a strong force adjacent to a heavily timbered gorge below what one Confederate aptly called “an amphitheatre of hills,” the colonel dismounted three regiments. As they charged they faced three field guns and two cavalry brigades. When they halted, the graycoats responded with a mounted countercharge, forcing them back toward Hammonds’s brigade riding to their support. For half a mile men of both Union brigades fled in confusion as the Federals suffered 150 casualties and lost three hundred horses. Finally after heavy losses, Hatch’s division, which had been feeding its horses, came to the rescue and drove Forrest’s cavalry back to the original point of the attack. During the night the Rebels retreated to near Sugar Creek on the Alabama line toward Florence.23 Early the next morning in a dense fog, Hammond’s men rode out in the advance, crossed Sugar Creek, and dismounted to fight when they faced heavy firing, caught instantly in another Forrest ambush. Hammond’s men fled for more than three hundred yards, losing 150 casualties from four regiments. The 4th Tennessee’s company captains called the ambush a “desperate engagement” in which their troopers fought “most gallantly.” Capt. Thomas J. Gorman of Company H recorded that his veterans of the Atlanta Campaign had “acted with the greatest bravery and coolness with full presence of minds [having] charged the enemy’s work against overwhelming numbers of infantry.” Two hours later around four o’clock, Forrest retreated. Wilson despaired. With his ammunition low, rations almost depleted, and Thomas’s infantry far behind, the young general abandoned further pursuit. Summing up the experience of the chase, James Goodwin of the 4th Tennessee wrote: “We pressed them on day after day, fighting them some every day, capturing prisoners, small arms and large guns, also a large amount of ammunition for musket and 23. Olmstead, Memoirs, 171; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 191; OR, 45(1):566–67, 578; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 121; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 417–19; Morton, Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 295–96; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 649–51; Sanders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” 403; Olmstead, Memoirs, 171.

312

The Nashville Campaign

cannon. We had a great deal of bad weather, rain, cold wind, sleet and snow. We foraged off the country for both man and beast.”24 On December 27, as a weak gesture of pursuit, Wilson ordered Col. George Spalding of the 12th Tennessee to push toward the Tennessee River with five hundred select troopers. He learned from the colonel the next day that Forrest’s rearguard had crossed the river and removed the pontoons. But Forrest, in his own words, had been “compelled almost to sacrifice [his] command.” In addition to his casualties, hundreds of his dismounted troopers, left so by “unserviceable horses,” had since “taken advantage of all the confusion” and were “now scattered . . . or [had] gone to their homes.” During the Battle of Nashville and the pursuit of Hood afterward, Dyer’s 1st Tennessee lost fewer than ten casualties, four of whom fell at Lynnville. But other Tennessee Union regiments heavily involved lost about a tenth of their reduced numbers: Stephens’s 4th Tennessee, thirty-four; Story’s 10th Tennessee, thirty-five; and Spalding’s 12th Tennessee, fifty.25 The pursuit ended except for a swiftly amassed six-hundred-man cavalry brigade that included Col. William F. Prosser’s 2nd Tennessee at Decatur, Palmer’s 15th Pennsylvania, and detachments of the 10th, 12th, and 13th Indiana. As senior officer Palmer assumed command. On December 29 Palmer’s cavalry killed a few graycoats and captured fifty in a charge and pursuit along a road leading through a marshy swamp near Hillsboro. Capt. Theophilus F. Wallace of Company H, 3rd Tennessee, a renowned marksman, “killed three of four men with his pistol.”26 Riding the next day in a cold rain from Courtland to Leighton, the bluecoats captured about twenty Rebels. After awakening to a blanket of snow on December 31, Palmer led his men south to Russellville, where he learned that Hood’s pontoon train with eight pontoon wagons lay only a few miles to the west without an escort. Down the road Prosser spotted the pontoons stretching for three miles. Seeing the bluecoats, the terrified teamsters cut loose a mule each and rode off into the dark. Palmer’s cavalry spent most of the night burning seventy-eight damp pontoons and two hundred wagons, shooting all but the best mules.27 24. OR, 45(1):758, 772; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 41; Jordan and Pryor, Forrest, 652–53. 25. OR, 45(2):756; RAGT, 603; ORS, 65:464, 467; TICW, 1:346; Carter, First Regiment, 283–322. 26. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 200–201; Hurst, Forrest, 242; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 124. 27. Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 124; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 201.

The Battle of Nashville

313

Following a few hours of sleep, Palmer’s troopers rode toward Aberdeen, Mississippi, through a hilly region seeking Hood’s wagon train. Nearing their destination an hour before midnight, Palmer and Prosser took four hundred soldiers to attack the front of the wagon park of 110 wagons, lining both sides of the road on about ten acres with hundreds of “broken-down mules and horses [standing] nearby.” Maj. W. R. McBath of the 2nd Tennessee, together with the other two hundred soldiers, stood by to attack the park’s rear. As planned they attacked at midnight, finding the graycoats sleeping, “playing cards [and] cooking.” To their surprise, among the one hundred soldiers captured was “a young girl, about fifteen, dressed in a Confederate uniform [and] a fur cap.” Before burning the wagons, the Federals took pity on the harassed, hungry-looking graycoats and allowed them to take as much food and provision as they could carry on the mules and horses they spared for the prisoners.28 Around two o’clock in the morning, after separating into a number of detachments, Palmer’s command began its trek back with 175 prisoners and 200 unmounted horses and mules. Occasionally the men were fired upon by bushwhackers before reaching “Jackson’s Military Road.” That night they finally enjoyed “a very short sleep.”29 The column halted before dawn briefly on January 4, 1865, to eat a meal and to feed their horses and mules when they heard from Rebel prisoners that Col. A. A. Russell of the 7th Alabama Cavalry, three hundred strong, traveled toward them on the same road. Palmer called for one hundred volunteers to take the advance; all the other horse soldiers rode in the middle of the column, one alongside each prisoner. With Palmer and Prosser leading the advance, on a ridge three miles down the road they met Russell’s command. When the order was given to charge, according to Lt. John W. Andes of the 2nd Tennessee, “[e]very man applied the spurs, and the war whoop was raised along the column, and on we dashed to the conflict with drawn sabres.”30 The charge of the 2nd Tennessee and 10th Indiana with pistols and sabers surprised Russell’s soldiers and broke their column. Some Rebels stood and fought but many more abandoned their mounts and fled into the “steep mountains covered with timber.” Of Russell’s three hundred men, only fifty were captured; the others either escaped up the mountains or retreated on horse28. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 201; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 124; McKinney, Education in Violence, 423. 29. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troops, 201. 30. Ibid., 201–2.

314

The Nashville Campaign

back. As they pursued the enemy down the road, they heard jubilant voices yelling, “Hoorah for the Yanks! Hoorah for the Yanks!” They soon learned these came from twenty-five now-recaptured soldiers of Steedman’s infantry. This skirmish was about the best it ever got for the men of the 2nd Tennessee: a few Rebels killed, others captured, and more than two hundred fleeing in panic.31 Following the skirmish, which Palmer’s men called the Battle of Indian Creek after a nearby stream, the cavalry brigade reorganized and halted at Mount Hope, “a beautiful mountain village” at the base of the mountain below the battle site. Here they experienced their first “good night’s sleep” in six days. On January 5 they halted for the night three miles south of Courtland. On the night of the sixth at ten o’clock, they reached Decatur, “cold, wet, hungry, and nearly dead for sleep.” Palmer turned over 190 prisoners and reported the destruction of 385 Rebel wagons. Later in his reporting of the raid, General Thomas wrote: “To Colonel Prosser and his command is accredited the credit of giving Hood’s army the last blow of the campaign, at a distance of over two hundred miles from where we first struct the enemy on the 15th of December, near Nashville.”32 Of all the state’s Union cavalry regiments in the Battle of Nashville, none outperformed Spalding’s 12th Tennessee. The regiment had captured General Rucker, commanding a brigade of Forrest’s cavalry, the headquarters train of General Chalmers, and about four hundred prisoners. It had also assisted in the capture of twenty-five artillery pieces. Much of the Tennesseans’ success in this campaign lay with the bravery and leadership of Col. George Spalding. The former Michigan schoolteacher, who adapted so well to the military, possessed what Governor Johnson called his “signal abilities to command.” As a consequence of his performance and Johnson’s recommendation, Spalding received the rank of brevet brigadier general.33 As a result of the Battle of Nashville and its aftermath, General Wilson issued commendations to Colonel Spalding as well as to one of his captains, J. C. Pooy. He also commended Capt. Russ B. Davis of Company F, 10th Tennessee—whom Hatch had reported as “behav[ing] with great gallantry”—and Cpl. Harrison Collins of Company A, 1st Tennessee, a future recipient of the Medal of Honor.34 31. Ibid., 202–3. 32. Ibid., 202–3, 215–18. 33. Johnson to Edwin M. Stanton, Jan. 16, 1865, PAJ, 7:416–17. 34. OR, 45(1):569–70.

The Battle of Nashville

315

Altogether—including the fighting north to Nashville from Pulaski, at Nashville, and south to the Tennessee River—the Union cavalry lost 902 horsemen: 122 killed, 521 wounded, and 259 missing. According to Wilson, “The derisive offer of a liberal reward for a dead cavalryman” was never heard “in the West after the battle of Nashville.” Such derision “disappeared as the cavalry came together in mass . . . and began close cooperation with the other arms of service.”35 The Battle of Nashville represented the greatest triumph for Union cavalry in the West. Several forces merged to make their victory in partnership with blue-coated infantrymen possible. For the Federals it was a good time to win a battle. Confederates had been demoralized by Schofield’s slaughter of their army at Franklin, which resulted in the loss of thousands of comrades and hundreds of officers. Hood had further weakened his army by his decision to divide his cavalry, with Forrest being sent away from the main front to Murfreesboro. Before the battle Hood’s soldiers also faced worse conditions because of having less shelter below Nashville than Thomas’s army, with better quarters in the city. In contrast the Federals seldom stood more ready for combat, especially Wilson’s cavalry corps, mounted on the best-available horses in Tennessee and Kentucky and armed with seven-shot repeating rifles. The bluecoats on horseback fought under a unified command under a cavalry chief who had thoroughly scrutinized his officers during the recent weeks. Wilson had arranged his modus operandi with the backing of General Thomas. Both generals believed in the cavalry’s ability, if properly led, to cooperate with the infantry, push around the enemy’s flanks to his rear, and pursue him as he retreated. In this case they had been more correct than Sherman. 35. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:28; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:554–55.

PART 6

East Tennessee and Beyond

”Of the conduct of the command [to Saltville] I cannot speak in terms too high of praise. . . . Neither danger, long marches, sleepless nights, hunger, [n]or hardships brought a complaint, and the utmost harmony and good feeling prevailed throughout.” Maj. Gen. George Stoneman

Maj. Gen. George Stoneman From R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884–88).

CHAPTER 20 Bulls Gap

O

n February 18, 1864, the 13th Tennessee arrived from Kentucky and camped at Camp Gillem, a mile northwest of Nashville. Forty new recruits joined them the next day, bringing reports of suffering from upper East Tennessee. The regiment spent several days raising “big ‘Bell’ tents.” These “old smoker[s]” with a stove in the middle, wrote regimental historians, caused the men “more tears . . . than all [their] tribulations.” Soon details drained the grounds, “police[d] the camp,” and went on scouts. On March 3 all of the men received two months’ pay, which some spent “for . . . useless things [from] swindlers . . . swarm[ing] about the vicinity,” while others saved it or “sent it back to their suffering families.”1 By the ides of March, the men had their “first mounted drill,” the source of “many amusing . . . accidents.” Early in April Daniel Ellis brought in recruits and mail from the upper counties of East Tennessee. By then non-enlistee refugees arriving from the region established their residence at a boardinghouse on Summer Street. After an outbreak of smallpox in camp, Colonel Miller moved the men nine miles west of the capital along the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad to Camp Catlett, established at Belle Meade plantation. Here the mountain men camped from April 13 to May 3, spending time “in drill, saber exercise, camp duty and grazing horses.” On occasion they guarded “forage . . . being transported down the Cumberland river to Nashville.”2 When first established in May 1864, the first two brigades of Gillem’s Fourth Division guarded the railroads south and west of Nashville while the Third Brigade guarded the Louisville & Nashville at Gallatin. Once a “prosperous 1. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 133–36. 2. Ibid., 137–38.

320

East Tennessee and Beyond

business” town surrounded “by fine farming lands,” The county seat had a courthouse and jail; a few churches; several general stores and shops for tailors, shoemakers, and saddlers; three blacksmiths; and male and female academies. Miller appointed Lt. Col. Andrew J. Brown of the 8th Tennessee as provost there. The former mayor of Jonesborough had his hands full from the beginning. Only days before the Third Brigade entered the town, a Yankee schoolmaster arrived with six instructors to teach what he estimated would become a school for three to four hundred blacks. The schoolmaster had the support of the town’s outgoing commander, Brig. Gen. Eleazer A. Paine, and Capt. Benjamin Nicklen, in charge of an artillery battery at Fort Thomas as well as a nearby contraband camp. White sixteen-year-old student Alice Williamson recorded in her diary that “[the] East Tenneseans are the meanest men I ever saw; but they have one good trait they make the negroes ‘walk a chalk.’”3 In a racist rampage during the first week in May, some of the troopers burned a school for contrabands, one shot a black man whom he accused of insulting a white female student, and that cavalryman’s comrades threatened to “kill every negro” in the town. A week later Tories torched another black school, but Yanks “by ringing bells and firing gun[s], . . . assembled and put it out.” Tennesseans resented out-of-state soldiers “making the colored . . . man think he is the whole thing [what the war was about]” and giving blacks an opportunity to be schooled. Backed by some locals, Tories pitted themselves against blacks and a few Yankee artillerymen and northern schoolteachers. To prevent violence, Miller prohibited the men from visiting town except with a pass from their colonel. He also threatened them with severe punishment if they interfered with the teachers.4 Most of the brigade’s troopers camped outside of town at a grove of sugar trees near Fort Thomas. From there they chased real and imaginary guerrillas, impressed horses, and searched for forage. Many of the men became ill during May and June because of the location of their campsite on “low ground . . . densely shaded [with] . . . sugar trees.” Some troopers, according to one officer, were “dying of diarrhea caused by using Limestone water.” Some of Brown’s 3. Durham, Rebellion Revisited, 197–98; BDTGA, 2:98; Alice Williamson Diary, May 6, 1864, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 140–41. 4. Durham, Rebellion Revisited, 197–98; Alice Williamson Diary, May 6, June 5, 1864; Stephen V. Ash, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South (Baton Rouge, 1988), 134.

Bulls Gap

321

men served as a town guard. Company G, 13th Tennessee, detached to defend South Tunnel on the Louisville & Nashville near Gallatin, observed a freight train on May 4 moving north slowed virtually to a standstill. Near the tunnel, as the engineer jumped from the train, it collided with a southbound troop train, killing several soldiers. The northbound engineer ran through a field as tunnel guards, believing him “a rebel sympathizer,” fired but missed.5 Daniel Ellis left Elizabethton again during the last days of April with an entirely new company and a knapsack of mail. He connected with the first open rail line at Russellville and moved by train counterclockwise to Nashville and Gallatin. After a few days in camp and the mustering of Company M, he returned with a sixty-pound knapsack filled with “money, letters, and presents for the soldiers’ families.” Most of the contents came from a recent payroll, but some came from private plunder as well. Ellis wrote that one soldier, Capt. Samuel E. Northington of Johnson County, alone “made up a package worth five hundred dollars, consisting of money and goods for his family.”6 On May 11 Lt. Col. Roderick R. Butler, a politician commanding the 13th but knowing his military inadequacies, yielded command to Col. William H. Ingerton, formerly a lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Cavalry. Ingerton, “a model officer and. . . . a thorough disciplinarian,” had served on Sooy Smith’s staff for the Meridian Campaign, during which he led a brilliant saber charge at Ivy Hill farm. When the others objected to his appointment, Ingerton agreed to resign in a month if his service proved unsatisfactory. But by that time “all recognized his ability.” Ingerton was one of several officers in Tory regiments to have formerly served in the 4th U.S. Cavalry. By 1864, wrote Sgt. James Larson of the regular regiment, some officers seized the opportunity “to command volunteer cavalry, and even some sergeants had been given commissions in the new regiments raised by Governor Johnson in East Tennessee.”7 After the wave of sickness at the sugar grove, Colonel Ingerton moved his camp about a mile east of Gallatin to “rolling ground . . . easily drained.” There he had “an old building covered with tarpaulins” and called it “West Point.” He issued to his officers George B. McClellan’s Regulations and Instructions for the Field Service of the United States Cavalry, from which he conducted “daily reci5. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 139–40, 143. 6. Ibid., 141; Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 255–57, 274. 7. Roderick R. Butler to Johnson, July 5, 1864, PAJ, 7:12–13; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 142–43; Larson, Sergeant Larson, 282; copy of William H. Ingerton file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library.

322

East Tennessee and Beyond

tations.” He saw that the men regularly performed “drill and saber practice” as well as improved their horsemanship by “training their horses to jump ditches, logs and fences, [and] charge up and down steep hills.” He also held “dress-parades in the evening and inspection every Sunday.”8 At Colonel Miller’s invitation Governor Johnson traveled the short trip by train to Gallatin to address the brigade on July 19. He spoke for two hours (as was his habit). To Johnson, hardly a religious man, the secessionists exhibited the same rebellious spirit causing “the devil and his angels . . . to be thrust out of Heaven.” Addressing the thorny issue of race, the governor said that he wanted blacks to have “a chance,” but if they “proved indolent and worthless,” the South would have no place for them. He claimed that his political enemies “would not hesitate to unite with Confederates to destroy [the] Government.” Finally, in speaking of East Tennessee—and again alluding to the Bible—he hoped that the troopers “would ‘go up and possess the land.’ ”9 During its stay at Gallatin, Miller’s men impressed the best horses and mounted the entire brigade from the surrounding countryside. Officers provided owners with vouchers for the horses stating the owner’s loyalty or disloyalty. On designated days the brigade’s quartermaster determined each animal’s value, and Colonel Ingerton heard appeals. He rejected pleas by well-to-do Rebels for fairness but often even released animals belonging to the poor. During these seizures questionable private foraging occurred as well. William H. Robinson, a self-proclaimed “loyal Citzin of Wilson County,” accused Capt. James B. Wyatt and a squad of his troopers of entering his home “in a state of intoxication” and leaving with $1,350, a “shotgun, one saddle, [and] one horse.” According to Wyatt’s version, Robinson had been “harboring guerrillas.” Furthermore his men took only “a strange horse in the neighborhood” and a Rebel officer’s saddle.10 Some troopers, “hearing of the suffering and wants of their families,” rode their mounts for unauthorized visits to East Tennessee. Miller often allowed leaves by officers to collect these absentees as well as to recruit other men. Governor Johnson, feeling sympathy for the men and their families, appealed 8. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 143. 9. Miller to Johnson, July 15, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Speech near Gallatin, July 19, 1864, PAJ, 7:41–44; Nashville Times and True Union, July 21, 1864. 10. Durham, Rebellion Revisited, 198–99; William H. Robinson to Johnson, June 11, 1864, Andrew Johnson Papers, TSLA; James B. Wyatt to Johnson, June 17, 1864, ibid.; Patton to Johnson, July 7, 1864, ibid.

Bulls Gap

323

to General Thomas on their behalf. Thomas agreed to allow all deserters from the Fourth Division twenty-five additional days to return to their regiment without penalty. With the general’s blessing, Johnson also received control of his own Governor’s Guard, consisting of the 10th Tennessee Infantry, Miller’s Third Brigade, and Batteries E and G, 1st Tennessee Light Artillery. Thomas viewed this as a way of aiding the governor “in re-establishing Civil Government.” Johnson in turn gave the field command of the guard to Gillem, who worked through Miller.11 The governor received numerous appeals from the upper counties of East Tennessee, an area loosely occupied by Confederates. According to one petition signed by 137 individuals, cultivation and harvesting of grains was becoming “impossible.” Without assistance, the petitioners claimed, families would be “compelled to abandon the Land.” Believing the army at Knoxville too weak, too unwilling, and too immobile to free the upper counties, Johnson in August ordered Gillem to accompany Miller’s brigade to East Tennessee. Gillem in turn ordered Patton’s 8th Tennessee to remain temporarily at Gallatin.12 Gillem traveled from Nashville with Capt. William J. Patterson’s Battery E and Lt. Jeremiah H. Crane’s Battery G, 1st Tennessee Light Artillery and a personal escort of Company A, 10th Tennessee Infantry, mounted for the expedition. Colonel Scully of the 10th Tennessee Infantry also accompanied the expedition as Gillem’s disbursing officer. Serving on the general’s staff as well was Capt. David M. Nelson, nineteen-year-old son of former Tennessee congressman Thomas A. R. Nelson, until recently commander of Battery B, 1st Tennessee Light Artillery; the captain was back in the army after resigning in July because of “a murderous assault” upon a civilian. At the junction of the Lebanon and Gallatin pikes, Gillem met the 9th and 13th Tennessee. A lone buggy driven by Adj. Samuel W. Scott accompanied its colonel’s wife, Mrs. William H. Ingerton, an agreeable, well-educated Ohioan. Because of the “difficulty in subsisting the entire command on one road,” the general divided his force into two columns traveling different routes. The men rode in the rain all day under “ponchos and Gumcoats.”13 On August 10 the columns consolidated at Sparta. Gillem observed of the 11. Order re Governor’s Guard, Aug. 1, 1864, PAJ, 7:70; Johnson to Thomas, Aug. 16, 1864, ibid., 98; OR, 39(2):325. 12. Petition from Citizens of Upper East Tennessee, n.d., Johnson Papers, LC; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 151, 155–56; TICW, 1:342. 13. Gillem to Johnson, Aug. 13, 1864, PAJ, 7:92; ibid., 102n.

324

East Tennessee and Beyond

town that “one half of it was burned by Stokes & the other half . . . abandoned.” Some officers dined at the home of General Dibrell’s sister, who fed them well and treated them kindly, asking only the same under similar circumstances for her two Rebel sons. Gillem complained about his officers’ enforcement of regulations, saying that the cavalrymen “were not as well disciplined as . . . expected” and that in his opinion “their officers seem to have but little control over them, nor do they seem to endeavor to obtain any.” The next day the brigade reached the Cumberland Plateau and encamped at a resort near a beautiful fifty-foot waterfall, only to have a handful of bushwhackers spoil their day. Moving on the Tennesseans faced a “long train of vacant houses & blackened ruins” but found few enemies other than “rattlers and varmints.” Three bushwhackers near their “line of march,” wrote Gillem, “died suddenly.” On August 14 many of the men renewed their friendships with soldiers of the 4th Tennessee Infantry stationed at Kingston.14 Riding into Knoxville on August 17, they were welcomed by loyalists. That night the expedition camped east of town near the fairgrounds in a rainstorm that soon flattened their tents. Brig. Gen. Davis Tillson, commanding at Knoxville, added some fresh horses and allowed most of the 10th Michigan Cavalry, temporarily detached to him, to accompany Gillem. Knoxville unionists expected Gillem to expel John Hunt Morgan’s twelve hundred cavalrymen and Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn’s five hundred infantrymen from the upper counties. This would allow access to “the hay, oats, and wheat . . . abundant in the upper counties and [to] the corn, the best in twenty years.” It would also dam up the flow of crops and livestock to Virginia. Finally they hoped that Federal brigade would destroy the valuable salt works just across the state border at Saltville, Virginia.15 On August 18 Gillem’s cavalrymen advanced to Strawberry Plains, abandoned by them nine months before. No longer raw recruits, they now felt “well drilled and [possessed] confidence in themselves and their officers.” After resting they rode northeast to Morristown. Gillem sent Colonel Ingerton and the 1st Battalion, 13th Tennessee ahead to rout an enemy squad at Rogersville. Just before daylight on August 19, Ingerton reached McKinney’s Mill ford, three miles below the town. He captured enemy pickets and pushed his horsemen at a fast trot into Rogersville, surprising a small force. They killed a few 14. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 155–56; Gillem to Johnson, Aug. 9, 1864, PAJ, 7:92. 15. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 158; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Aug. 18, 1864, PAJ, 7:100–101.

Bulls Gap

325

and captured thirty-five Rebels, including Confederate congressman Joseph B. Heiskell. They also seized an army officer’s “fine black, blaze-face horse,” which Ingerton later presented to General Gillem.16 When Wheeler threatened Knoxville on August 22, Gillem momentarily reversed his course until learning that the Confederate horsemen had headed for Nashville. Then Gillem moved on toward Bulls Gap. Some of his command skirmished at Rogersville again before rejoining the main column, engaging the enemy at Blue Springs and Greeneville. At the former on the twenty-third, Gillem’s escort charged the graybacks. Capt. Henry Kerner, a regular who trained men in both the 4th and 13th Tennessee, was mortally wounded. The general reported that in the fighting at Blue Springs and Greeneville, Colonel Miller exhibited “almost reckless gallantry” as he “inspire[ed] his men by his own example.” He believed that the brigade was “improving rapidly.”17 Gillem returned to Rogersville on August 26. Two days later he attempted to reach Morristown, but being blocked by the rising Holston River, he turned back to Rogersville. The to-and-fro movement perplexed his cavalrymen, many awaiting a march into their home counties. Some thought that the general avoided facing the enemy. Actually he was caught between two superior forces, Wheeler to their west and John Hunt Morgan to the east, either of whom might disrupt his supply line to Knoxville. On August 30 Gillem crossed the Holston River and moved via Russellville to Bulls Gap. His brigade remained there for three days by the railroad, unloading supplies from Knoxville and returning prisoners on the emptied train. Awaiting scouting reports, they spent time “shoeing horses and repairing wagons.” Some men from the upper counties also received visits from their “wives and others.”18 At sunset on September 3, twelve-year-old James Leahy, who resided west of Greeneville with his widowed mother, rode into camp on his small mare. Having been treated kindly by Gillem’s men a few days earlier, he wanted to warn them that Rebels had reappeared at Greeneville. Since he saw only that part of a brigade near his home, he estimated the force as having between two hundred and three hundred men. The expedition actually consisted of about fifteen hundred men and two artillery pieces under John Hunt Morgan, who was currently ignoring a suspension of his command of the Department of 16. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 158; Johnson to Lincoln and Stanton, Aug. 25, 1864, PAJ, 7:120. 17. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 159–60; TICW, 1:343, 345; OR, 39(1):488–89. 18. OR, 39(1):488–89; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 160.

326

East Tennessee and Beyond

Southwestern Virginia and East Tennessee by the War Department. Morgan was accused of having acquiesced to a bank robbery by his troops on a raid into Kentucky. But the “weary, care-worn” general hoped to parlay a victory into a favorable hearing at Abingdon, Virginia, on September 10.19 Morgan arrived in Greeneville early Saturday afternoon on September 3. Despite a warning from Capt. James F. Cantrill that his scouts had spotted the Federals at Bulls Gap, eighteen miles away, he believed Gillem’s men to be below Strawberry Plains. Morgan took comfortable quarters at Catherine Williams’s three-story mansion on Main Street. Other generals, including Longstreet, Burnside, and Gillem, had slept there before him. Morgan and his “glittering staff [of] young men . . . generally . . . of the best Kentucky families . . . were inclined to luxurious habits, fond of ‘square meals’ and of sleeping on ‘goose hair.’ ” The general deployed troops west and north of town to guard the three pikes—Warrensburg, Bulls Gap, and Rogersville—but he left the Newport Road from the southwest unguarded. Then he dined with his staff and the ladies of the household—including Lucy Williams, unionist daughter-inlaw of Catherine. He requested an early breakfast so he could ride out with his troopers for Bulls Gap the next day. After dinner he galloped out to greet Giltner’s brigade on Rogersville Road and returned. Morgan routinely ordered an 11:00 p.m. inspection of the picket lines and, after receiving a favorable report, retired at midnight along with the rest of his staff on the third floor.20 Meanwhile Miller, whose men knew the vicinity, convinced a reluctant Gillem, wary of an unorthodox night attack, to march on Greeneville from Bulls Gap immediately. The general divided his force into two columns on different routes. Ingerton of the 13th Tennessee left with five hundred men at 10:00 p.m. down off-the-beaten-track trails. Gillem and Miller followed with the others an hour later along the main road, hoping to create a wedge between Rebels reported west of Greeneville and the town. With shots at dawn, Gillem would signal an attack: he would charge the enemy’s front and Ingerton the enemy’s rear.21 19. Dee Alexander Brown, The Bold Cavaliers: Morgan’s 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Raiders (New York, 1959), 267; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 229–30, 234; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 166–67. 20. Brown, Bold Cavaliers, 267–69; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 231–34; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 537– 38; George D. Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie: Reminiscences of a Confederate Cavalryman, ed. Bell Irvin Wiley (Jackson, Tenn., 1957), 129, 168, 181. 21. Ramage, Rebel Raider, 234; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 166–67; 169; Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 308; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 171.

Bulls Gap

327

Gillem and Miller started on “one of the darkest and stormiest” nights that they “ever witnessed.” Without “almost constant lightening,” they could not have seen the road. Just before morning, still miles from Greeneville, a white man and then a black woman informed them that Morgan was at the Williams’s mansion. But both Gillem and Miller dismissed such reports as rumors. When Ingerton heard the same story from an excited young black man, he believed it. As on other occasions, he called upon Capt. Christopher C. Wilcox of Company G, ordering him to take his company and Northington’s Company I and “dash into town, surround the Williams’ residence and bring Morgan out dead or alive.”22 Once Wilcox galloped into Greeneville, he deployed his soldiers into squads. One squad fired at sleepy sentries at storefronts along Main Street, wounding some, capturing others, and awaking Morgan. Before another squad running through the garden reached the mansion’s front door, the general and his staff crossed through the garden to the back of a hotel. Seeing other bluecoats heading their way, Morgan and two companions scurried into a vineyard before being spotted by Pvt. Andrew J. Campbell, a blue-eyed Irishman and one-time Confederate conscript. The others surrendered, but the intrepid Morgan ran. After twice ordering him to halt, Campbell shot him through his left shoulder blade, causing the bullet to exit through his heart and chest. The general lived long enough to yell “Oh God!” raise his arms, and fall face down. Only after Wilcox asked one of the staff officers to identify the man did Campbell realize he had killed John Hunt Morgan.23 By now Miller’s men had pierced Morgan’s left flank and along with Ingerton’s other troops entered Greeneville. Turning back toward the town, Col. D. Howard Smith and Col. Henry L. Giltner saw a sea of blue uniforms. As they drew closer, they heard roaring cheers but were unaware that the men were cheering thirty-year-old Private Campbell of Company K as he rode with Morgan’s body slung across the front of his saddle. The Rebel colonels skirted their troopers to the north, ordered their artillery to fire on the town, and mounted an ineffective charge before retreating to Jonesborough.24 22. Ramage, Rebel Raider, 234–35; OR, 39(2):750; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 171. 23. Ramage, Rebel Raider, 235, 236–37; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 173–74; OR, 39(1):492; Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 308–9; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 171, 177–78; Ed Speer, “One Moment of Glory: The Life of Private Andrew Campbell of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A.,” THQ 60 (winter 2001): 284, 286. 24.Speer, “One Moment of Glory,” 286; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 172–73; Ellis, Thrilling

328

East Tennessee and Beyond

Gillem was within a mile of Greeneville when Campbell reported to him with Morgan’s corpse. Soldiers “seemed . . . wild with delight” as they shouted “Morgan is killed!” The general congratulated Campbell but questioned the exhibition of the body. Then either Gillem or Lt. Col. John B. Brownlow of the 9th Tennessee—depending upon one’s witnesses—had Morgan placed under a shade tree, then transferred the corpse by caisson to the Williams mansion, and finally under a flag of truce, to the Confederates at Jonesborough. As a result of the fighting at Greeneville, Gillem gained the rank of brevet major general, and Private Campbell became 1st Lieutenant Campbell of Company E. James Leahy (who remained an unidentified informant) through Gillem’s good graces attended school in Nashville. Others claiming to have notified the Federal commander of Morgan’s presence in Greeneville, such as unionist Sarah E. Thompson, or who others claimed had notified him, such as Lucy Williams, gained a moment of fame. Governor Johnson felt that the expedition had changed “public judgement throughout that region.”25 Several factors contributed to Gillem’s victory at Greeneville. Leahy knew enough about the troops near his home to bring about the skirmish, though not enough to frighten away Gillem. En route to Greeneville, other loyalists and blacks helped. Tory familiarity with the countryside also proved immensely useful. The stormy night probably prevented detection of the marching troops. Morgan’s overconfidence, concern with his own comfort, “ignoran[ce] of the unpicketed Newport Road,” and disregard for scouting reports enticed him to sleep in town. Above all, Miller, Ingerton, and Wilcox’s boldness turned the tide for the bluecoats, yielding them 75 Rebels killed or wounded and 106 captured—compared with only 9 wounded for the Tennesseans.26 After the engagement Gillem fell back to Bulls Gap. There supplies could reach him by rail, and he could ship his prisoners to Knoxville. For more than two weeks his cavalrymen shod horses, repaired wagons, and readied themselves for the next fight. But by September 21 General Vaughn advanced near Bulls Gap. Gillem sent out Colonel Ingerton and a detachment of two hunAdventures, 309–10; Brown, Bold Cavaliers, 271–73; J. W. Scully, “Death of General John Morgan,” SHSP 31 (1903): 126. 25. Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 309–10; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 239–42, 244; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 181–83; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 538–39; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 178–79; Brown, Bold Cavaliers, 271; Scully, “Death of Morgan,” 127–28; Speer, “One Moment of Glory,” 289. 26. Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 180–81; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 241–42.

Bulls Gap

329

dred troopers of the 13th Tennessee to prevent the Rebels’ crossing Lick Creek Bridge, two and a half miles out. Being outnumbered, Ingerton fell back in an orderly fashion, alternating his rearguard as he retreated but losing a few men on mules who could not keep up.27 Vaughn abandoned his attack on Bulls Gap when the 9th and 13th Tennessee along with troops up from Knoxville marched around him toward Virginia. The Federals hoped to divert troops defending the saltworks at Saltville, Virginia, then under attack by a force of 5,200 cavalrymen out of Kentucky under the command of Brig. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge. Instead Confederates in the upper counties fell back to Saltville. After Burbridge met defeat there on October 2 with a loss of 350 casualties, he returned to Kentucky while Gillem’s command retreated to Bulls Gap.28 Gillem crossed the Holston River on October 19, looking for Vaughn near Morristown. On October 27 his advance skirmished at Panther Springs five miles west of Morristown. The next day, after bringing forward a battery of artillery and “form[ing] in columns of fours” one thousand yards from the enemy, Colonel Ingerton led a charge against Russellville that cost the enemy 85 killed and 224 wounded and captured, compared to 8 killed and wounded for the 13th; the Rebels killed Pvt. Marion J. Garrison of Company G near enough to be buried at his home. Following the fighting at Morristown, the Federals moved east to Greeneville.29 Early on November 9 Gillem heard that Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, the former vice president, had moved out of Virginia with a superior force. Consequently he dispatched battalions from the 13th Tennessee and the 8th Tennessee to guard the two main roads south from Jonesborough. Estimating that Breckinridge’s army exceeded five thousand men, he wired Brig. Gen. Jacob Ammen, commanding a division of infantry at Knoxville, for reinforcements. Hearing nothing from Ammen and learning that Breckinridge’s cavalry rode in force down two pikes toward Greeneville, Gillem evacuated in the evening to Bulls Gap. This pass through Bay’s Mountain had two steep forty-yard-wide spurs—each with an earthen fort—offering an ideal location at which to defend his brigade and the railroad route to Knoxville “curv[ing] through . . . it.”30 27. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 190–92. 28. Gillem to Johnson, Oct. 17, 1864, PAJ, 7:240–41; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 179, 180–81. 29. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 199–201. 30. Ibid., 204; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 553; Duke, Reminiscences, 187.

330

East Tennessee and Beyond

For the next two days, Gillem’s brigade strengthened its defensives. Again he wired Ammen, only fifty miles away, for urgent assistance and also telegraphed editor William G. Brownlow—whose son John served as a lieutenant colonel in the 9th Tennessee—urging him to wield whatever influence he might have with the general. A short distance from town on the afternoon of November 11, a detachment of the 13th came under heavy fire from the enemy’s advance, screened by bushes along the roadway. As the bluecoats retreated, several fell wounded. Soon Breckinridge’s main force moved directly toward Bulls Gap, while General Vaughn’s command moved below him via Warrensburg to attack the Federals from the rear.31 Gillem had his troops in line of battle before daylight the next day. He placed the 13th Tennessee’s three battalions near the town: Maj. Joseph H. Wagner on the east ridge; Maj. George W. Doughty, along with two pieces of artillery, in the earthwork along the south side of the railroad; and Maj. Eli Underwood on the west of the two ridges, defending the rear. On the west ridge Gillem positioned four pieces of artillery of Battery E, commanded by Lt. William J. Patterson and supported by Maj. James E. Deakins’s 8th Tennessee. To defend the rear he ordered Colonel Parsons and his 9th Cavalry down the Knoxville Pike.32 In addition to Vaughn’s one thousand Rebels pressing in on Gillem’s rear, Breckinridge’s plan of attack included two demonstrations of two to three hundred men each, one with artillery, directly down the railroad toward the town and another on Gillem’s left. Then Breckinridge and Duke with five hundred men would spring a surprise attack on Gillem’s right. But the plan failed because as Duke later wrote, “The enemy seemed to have discovered that the demonstrations made elsewhere were not serious, or, at least, dangerous; and massed against us.”33 The Confederates opened with a barrage and the feigned demonstrations. Then Duke turned in force against Wagner’s battalion on the east ridge and Patterson’s artillery, supported by Deakins on the west ridge, both behind earthen fortifications. When Wagner gave ground, Doughty’s battalion rushed to his aid, pushing back the yelling enemy. After charging Deakins two or three times, Duke sent his troops up a ravine to attack the artillery. The Rebels got close enough to kill a few of the battery’s horses.34 31. Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 552–53; OR, 39(1):889–90. 32. OR, 39(1):890; TICW, 1:352; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 205–7. 33. William C. Davis, Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol (Baton Rouge, 1974), 465. 34. Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 555–56.

Bulls Gap

331

Desperate to save his four guns, Captain Patterson depressed the muzzle of one gun and ordered his crew to fire. The recoil hurled him to the ground, but the shot threw “grape and canister” directly at the enemy. He repeated the process with that gun until he discouraged the oncoming Rebels and “the blood streamed out of his [own] nostrils.” Duke wrote, “Within thirty yards of the earthwork,” his graybacks “were staggered by the fire, halted, and could not be made to advance.” The Confederate forces now were caught in a crossfire. For an hour their generals sought to move forward but finally had to retreat with, as Duke calculated, “a loss of nearly one third [of] the entire force in killed and wounded.”35 Meanwhile south of Bulls Gap, Colonel Parsons and the 9th Tennessee repulsed an attack by General Vaughn. Firing continued at Bulls Gap from dawn to dusk the next day without a renewed assault. But Gillem found himself in a no-win situation, without ammunition, food, or reinforcements and surrounded by a swelling force that now included a five-hundred-man infantry unit from North Carolina commanded by Col. John Palmer. Following a consultation, he and his officers arranged a retreat for that night.36 At eight o’clock on a bright, cool evening, the brigade, led by two companies of the 9th Tennessee, began vacating Bulls Gap. To conceal the movement and to serve as the rearguard, battalions of the 8th and the 13th Tennessee delayed their departure until ten o’clock. This two-hour wait merely separated them from the main force. By now Breckinridge, having given up on a direct assault on Bulls Gap, had decided to join Vaughn via unguarded Taylor’s Gap in preventing Gillem’s retreat to Knoxville. After discovering that the Federals were on the move, he realized that he could do better: he could attack the enemy’s flanks.37 As Gillem’s main force swung west unharmed through Whiteburg, the general learned that reinforcements had arrived by rail at Morristown. He paused at Russellville to ascertain any pursuit. Hearing nothing, he moved on toward Morristown, leaving Patton’s 8th Tennessee to hold open an intersection for the passage of the wagon train. Gillem soon learned that the reinforcements at Morristown consisted only of three hundred infantry and dismounted cav35. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 206–7; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 554; Duke, Reminiscences, 189; Gillem to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1864, PAJ, 7:290–91. 36. Gillem to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1864, PAJ, 7:290–91; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 206; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 555; W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 466. 37. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 207–8; W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 466; OR, 39(1):890–91.

332

East Tennessee and Beyond

alry. Having no horses, their commander, a Major Smith, feared to separate his men from the train. Still, at Gillem’s urging, the major placed his men on a hill just outside of Morristown on the road to Russellville.38 Meanwhile the Rebels attacked the wagon train at the crossroads. Patton’s 8th fended off the enemy until the train passed, then gave way before Parsons’s 9th came to their rescue. Once Parsons’s regiment depleted its ammunition, the soldiers fell back in confusion. They rallied briefly when they met Smith’s reinforcements. But when the Rebels charged with a yell, the weary bluecoats became “panic-stricken.” Nearby Patterson’s artillerymen exhausted their shells and retreated a few hundred yards. Firing small arms, the captain and his men held on for a while. When all hope vanished, they cut loose the horses from the caissons and rode bareback south with the panic-stricken soldiers.39 When the 13th Tennessee and the two battalions of the rearguard finally reached Russellville, they were fired upon by Vaughn’s brigade, positioned between them and Gillem. Riding in a long single column, the bluecoats could not mount a charge and instead fell into utter confusion. It became every man for himself. Fortunately for them Vaughn moved on toward Morristown to link up with the other Confederates. The scattered bluecoats crossed the Holston River to their east, reorganized, found food for themselves and their horses, and rode unmolested to Strawberry Plains. Then on November 16 the brigade rode to Knoxville and went into camp at the fairgrounds.40 Gillem’s losses during the nightmarish retreat from Bulls Gap included all of his artillery, ambulances, wagon train, pack train, and 150 prisoners and their horses. Suddenly, when Breckinridge got within striking distance of Knoxville, General Ammen upped his estimation of the enemy’s strength and himself appealed for assistance. But Breckinridge never attacked Knoxville; he remained for a time near Strawberry Plains before moving back toward Greeneville. Union stragglers and dismounted cavalrymen separated from their units during the stampede trickled into camp during the next several days. Although Gillem admitted that his troopers “became panic stricken” after passing Russellville, he placed primary blame for the defeat on Gen38. OR, 39(1):890–91; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 208, 209; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 557; Duke, Reminiscences, 189. 39. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 209–10. 40. W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 466–67; Duke, Reminiscences, 189; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 210–11; Gillem to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1864, PAJ, 7:290–91.

Bulls Gap

333

eral Ammen. “Had assistance been extended me when asked for from the comdr. at Knoxville, this disaster would not have occurred,” he wrote. His men “starve[d] whilst the store houses” at Knoxville were “full & [the] railroad [was] running to Russelville.”41 During spring 1864 the one-time regular cavalryman Ingerton brought greater efficiency to the 13th Tennessee after Miller had became a brigade commander and Butler returned to his true love, politics. But discipline problems remained for Miller’s entire brigade, as shown by the race rioting, plundering, and deserting that occurred at Gallatin. After arriving in East Tennessee accompanied by General Gillem, the brigade won national attention in September by scoring a victory at Greeneville that included the death of John Hunt Morgan. The glory of that battle faded two months later when General Breckinridge routed the brigade at Bulls Gap, causing the men to panic and flee to Knoxville. This embarrassment resulted not only from the inadequacies of Miller’s brigade but also from the unwillingness of General Ammen to come out of Knoxville to reinforce another Federal force. 41. Gillem to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1864, PAJ, 7:290–91; W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 467; OR, 39(1): 885–86, 891–92, 893; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 557.

CHAPTER 21

The Saltworks

F

ollowing the flight from Bulls Gap, Gillem’s cavalry encamped back at Knoxville. Both Gillem’s and Ingerton’s wives resided at the Franklin House. Twenty-four-year-old Joshua H. Walker of Maryville—a former lieutenant of Company D, 2nd Tennessee—entered the hotel on November 25. He was armed, intoxicated, and seeking revenge against Ingerton. As a member of Sooy Smith’s staff, Ingerton had brought court-martial charges against Walker at Memphis more than six months before “for drunkness and conduct unbecoming an officer.” Walker confronted Ingerton in the hotel’s lobby. In an ensuing struggle he shot the colonel in the abdomen with a pistol. Pending his arrest, soldiers held the assailant captive at the hotel.1 Seeking to avenge the murder of “a warm friend,” Capt. David M. Nelson, a Gillem staff member with a violent temper, grabbed a shotgun and rushed to the hotel. When he separated Walker from his guards and tried to shoot him, someone “knocked the muzzle of the gun up . . . discharg[ing]” its blast “into the ceiling of the hotel office.” For weeks Ingerton “lingered in great agony.” In his delirium he “would fight over [his] recent battles.” After he died on December 8, Gillem promised a speedy trial for Walker. But for most of December, Gillem and his cavalry were on an expedition to southwestern Virginia. Then early in January 1865, while they recovered, the former lieutenant from Blount County escaped from a military prison. When he returned home after the war, he was never prosecuted. Walker farmed in Sevier County until 1. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 214–15; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 338; copy of William H. Ingerton file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library.

The Saltworks

335

his death in 1892—while drinking he was “dragged to his death” after falling from a moving mule-drawn wagon.2 The choice of Capt. Barzilliah Stacy—formerly of the 7th Ohio Cavalry— as Ingerton’s replacement created schisms within the 13th Tennessee. The decision pitted those favoring the regiment’s senior ranking officer, Major Doughty, against those supporting Gillem’s and Miller’s backing of Captain Stacy. Earlier in spring 1864 Doughty briefly commanded the regiment before acquiescing to the more experienced Ingerton. Now he felt that he had the necessary combat service as well as the men’s support. But his opposition believed Stacy better suited to the position because of his “greater experience and longer service in the army.” When Gillem promoted Stacy over the major, Doughty and his friends “openly resisted the move.” Miller arrested Doughty and briefly held him until a more understanding Gillem released him and appointed Doughty as his own chief of staff.3 In November 1864 Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, no longer a prisoner of war and always looking forward to his next raid, received a cavalry command in East Tennessee. Stoneman wired General Burbridge in Kentucky to impress all available horses, to collect all the soldiers he could mount, and then to concentrate toward Cumberland Gap before awaiting further orders. At Knoxville Stoneman concentrated Gillem’s cavalry, supplied them by river and rail, silenced animosities between Gillem and Tillson, and restored “confidence . . . to a badly stampeded community.” On November 29 he directed Burbridge to move his 4,200 men and four artillery pieces south through Cumberland Gap and east to the railroad at Bean Station, where he was to await further orders while Gillem finished reorganizing and refitting his force of 1,500 men.4 All three generals had something to prove. Stoneman looked to redeem his reputation, soiled by his capture near Macon, Georgia, in August. Gillem hoped to restore the confidence his Tennesseans possessed before Bulls Gap. Burbridge wanted to overcome his failure at Saltville, Virginia, on October 2 and to avenge the ensuing “massacre”: The morning after Burbridge’s thwarted 2. Copy of Ingerton file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 215–17; Joshua H. Walker, 2nd Tennessee, CSR. 3. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 217–18; OR, 32(3):558. 4. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:556–57, 559; OR, 45(1):808–9; ORS, 65:613; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Nov. 30, 1864, PAJ, 7:323.

336

East Tennessee and Beyond

raid, Champ Ferguson, still riding with Williams’s command, led a band of men in killing about ninety wounded black soldiers at a field hospital. The next morning at Emory and Henry College, he then personally murdered a hospital-confined white Union officer named Lt. Elza C. Smith of the 13th Kentucky to avenge Smith’s killing of Lt. Col. Oliver P. Hamilton.5 Stoneman planned to destroy the lead mines at Wytheville, the saltworks at Saltville and much of the railroads in southwestern Virginia, then free the prisoners at Salisbury, North Carolina. The Salisbury phase proved too ambitious for his superior, General Schofield, perhaps reminding the Army of the Ohio commander of Stoneman’s misadventure in middle Georgia the past summer. The general approved only a plan related to southwestern Virginia.6 The Confederates held only one small battalion at Saltville but could shift additional troops there quickly. General Breckinridge’s command, the Department of Western Virginia and East Tennessee, stood between Stoneman and Saltville: two brigades in the upper counties of the Volunteer State and at least three others in southwestern Virginia. Basil Duke, with Morgan’s former command, watched near Rogersville and General Vaughn near Greeneville; both communicated by couriers and stood ready to unite east of the Watauga River. In Virginia the commands of Brig. Gen. George B. Cosby at Wytheville, Col. Vincent A. Witcher near Bluefield, and Col. Henry L. Giltner in Russell County all stood within striking distance of Saltville.7 On December 7 Stoneman sent Lt. Col. Thomas H. Reeves’s 4th Tennessee Infantry (headquartered at Loudon) and Col. George W. Kirk’s 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (at Knoxville) through Sevierville to Painted Rock, North Carolina, to hold the mountain passes until the enemy evacuated East Tennessee. En route Reeves was to march along the French Broad River to guard wagon trains collecting forage while Kirk “scour[ed] the mountain region between Tennessee and North Carolina, and clear[ed] it of rebels.” After the two regiments occupied Painted Rock on December 20, they confronted Col. John B. Palmer, commander of the Mountain District, moving west to get in the rear of Stoneman’s command. But for “a severe storm [and] raised . . . streams,” Palmer, a man prone to excuses, believed that he could have caught 5. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:556, 558, 559; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, xix, 206–7; W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 458–59; Ridley, Battles and Sketches, 527–28; Barefoot, Let Us Die Like Brave Men, 262–63. 6. OR, 45(1):809–10; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Nov. 30, 1864, PAJ, 7:323. 7. OR, 45(1):824–25; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 599.

The Saltworks

337

the raiders. After Reeves and Kirk divided their forces, Palmer pursued Kirk into Washington County, Tennessee. Except for a detachment that returned home and such small matters as insubordinate, disobedient, and “barely shod” men, Palmer felt that he could have captured Kirk.8 On December 10 Stoneman, with Gillem’s command, moved northeast with seven ambulances. The next day they met Burbridge at Bean Station, “on the old stage line . . . in a well cultivated rolling valley.” Here Stoneman for the first time detailed his plans to his officers. That night a train out of Knoxville arrived nearby, and cavalrymen received a week’s rations and all the ammunition their horses could carry.9 Rain saturated the Federals’ clothing as they traveled the next morning. Burbridge rode ahead with his Kentuckians to Bristol to intercept Vaughn’s two thousand cavalrymen, falling back from Greeneville. Seeing that Duke’s pickets awaited him at Big Creek bridge beyond Rogersville. Gillem sent Wagner’s battalion of the 13th Tennessee south to cross a ford while the 8th Tennessee feigned a crossing upstream. When the demonstration caused the enemy to fall back from the bridge, Gillem ordered the other two battalions of the 13th to charge across the span. This combined action drove Duke’s men back toward Rogersville in confusion.10 Gillem fed and rested his cavalry that evening before resuming the chase at midnight. Having ridden forty-four miles in twenty-four hours, at daylight his troopers reached the Holston River bank exhausted. But there was fighting to be done: the enemy occupied a cedar thicket on a bluff overlooking a good ford and the village of Kingsport. Gillem sent the 8th Tennessee two miles upstream to cross at Kyle’s Ford, then to turn the left flank of Duke’s force, temporarily commanded by Col. Richard C. Morgan, brother of the fallen general.11 Once the 8th Tennessee appeared to be getting across, Gillem sent the 9th Tennessee and two battalions of the 13th Tennessee to charge directly across the river and up the bluff, while his other men fired at the enemy from behind a screen of shrubbery. Again his move surprised and confused the enemy. Af8. TICW, 1:384; OR, 45(1):810, 842; Ina Woestemeyer Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid (Raleigh, 1961), 18–19. 9. OR, 45(1):810; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 220; Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill, 1989), 331. 10. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 220; OR, 45(1):819. 11. OR, 45(1):810.

338

East Tennessee and Beyond

ter briefly standing their ground, while “shooting too high,” the Rebels ran, starting a seven-mile pursuit during which they lost “all semblance of order.”12 Enemy losses included eighteen men killed and eighty-four captured (among them Richard Morgan) and many wagons filled with ammunition and food abandoned. Stoneman sent the prisoners with guards to Knoxville. One Carter County bluecoat of the 13th found the joy of victory short lived. Following Burbridge’s troopers through Blountville, some comrades came across the body of a young Confederate they knew named Christly Crow. Sadly they told his brother John, a member of the ambulance corps. Having to move on to look after the wounded on his own side, John Crow said his goodbyes and paid a local man to attend to his brother’s burial.13 Burbridge’s Federals charged into the border town of Bristol at three o’clock on the morning of December 14, meeting picket fire from Duke’s brigade. They dismounted and began destroying depots, loaded railroad cars, stands of arms and ammunition, and huge amounts of commissary. They seized Bristol’s telegraph office intact, along with the operator and recent dispatches describing Rebel units and their locations, orders issued, and enemy impressions of Stoneman’s expedition. Learning that Vaughn’s troops bivouacked ten miles below Bristol at Zollicoffer, Burbridge moved in that direction. En route he twice appealed to Stoneman for reinforcements.14 Because of its heavy artillery, Gillem’s column moved slowly toward Bristol. His patience finally expended, Stoneman distributed the shells, destroyed the caissons, and added to the number of horses pulling the guns. When he and Gillem arrived in Bristol, however, they learned that Vaughn had slipped away unseen in a dense fog around Burbridge, crossing the Holston River and heading for Abingdon, Virginia.15 Meanwhile Stoneman used the Rebel telegraph operator in a ploy to control messages sent out from Bristol. When Vaughn wired to see if it would be safe to send his dismounted men forward through the town, Stoneman threatened the operator with a hanging if he did not telegraph that the railroad was clear on to Abingdon. Then the general formed a greeting party of soldiers at Bristol’s station to capture a trainload of prisoners, burn their cars, and break 12. Ibid., 819–820. 13. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 220–21; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 601–2. 14. OR, 45(1):810–11, 815; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 604. 15. OR, 45(1):811, 815, 817, 820.

The Saltworks

339

up their guns. He sent more than two hundred prisoners south to Knoxville. Then the Federals destroyed the tracks below and above Bristol.16 Once Burbridge returned to Bristol, he pushed on to Abingdon, hoping he would cut off Vaughn and thereby prevent a concentration of the enemy at Saltville. Burbridge captured the crossroads at Abingdon two hours ahead of the Rebels’ anticipated arrival. But Vaughn bypassed the town and moved south of the Holston River toward Saltville. When Gillem arrived at Abingdon on the morning of December 15, Stoneman sent him north to pursue Vaughn, reinforced with the First Brigade. He ordered Burbridge to destroy the ironworks near Abingdon, then while en route to Marion, to cut the Virginia & East Tennessee Railroad and burn the bridges.17 After his regiment left Abingdon, having “burned the Court House square, & square opposite . . . with Depot, and jail,” Capt. James B. Wyatt of Company M, 13th Tennessee remained behind to see to his own personal war. He did this despite Major Wagner’s warning “not to remain or commit any overt act.” But the “handsome, dashing, young Officer,” embittered by earlier mistreatment from his relatives and the community, set fire to other buildings. Wyatt had not ridden far to rejoin his company before armed citizens hastily organized and pursued him. When he reached a gallop, his horse fell, making the captain an easy target for the fatal shots of the posse.18 With 2nd Lt. Peter L. Barry’s company of sharpshooters—drawn from the best marksmen in the 13th—in the advance, Gillem reached Glade Springs below Saltville around midnight. There he learned that Vaughn had turned east toward Marion. Meanwhile Burbridge’s 12th Kentucky demonstrated toward Saltville before swinging east to destroy two trains transporting Breckinridge’s artillery and other reinforcements from Wytheville. Stoneman chose first to disperse Vaughn’s Rebels by feigning an attack upon Saltville, prevent reinforcements from arriving by destroying nearby railroads (as Burbridge would do), and burn Wytheville and its leadworks. Then, amid the anticipated enemy confusion, he would return to demolish the saltworks.19 Gillem’s sharpshooters reached the rear of Vaughn’s cavalry well before sunrise on December 16 and drove it into Marion. When the Federals charged 16. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 221. 17. OR, 45(1):811, 817, 818. 18. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 221–22. 19. OR, 45(1):811–12, 818, 821–22.

340

East Tennessee and Beyond

the rear of Vaughn’s troopers in the darkness, graybacks and civilians alike fired from the houses. In the confusion soldiers could “scarcely tell friend from foe.” Capt. William M. Gourley and his men of the 13th Tennessee galloped into town with sabers drawn. Spotting a gray uniform near him, the captain struck Colonel Gideon of Vaughn’s command with his sword. Gideon in turn shot Gourley off his horse. Instantly sharpshooter Robert Shell avenged Gourley’s death by fatally shooting Gideon. Once the enemy took refuge in the heights above Marion, friends of “Old Fighting Gourley, mistakenly thinking his death was caused by a shot from the house near where he fell, burned the dwelling.”20 West of Wytheville, Vaughn’s artillery opened fire on the Federals. Gillem gave Capt. Patrick Dyer of Company B a 13th Tennessee guidon. Once he yelled “Charge!” the Irish-born captain was to place the flag on one of the guns in Vaughn’s battery. As ordered, within a short time, he waved the banner over a captured artillery piece, attracting his comrades toward the battery. Altogether Gillem’s soldiers seized eight pieces of artillery on the way to Wytheville—including four the unionists had lost during the Bulls Gap stampede—along with ninety-three wagons and more than three hundred prisoners. Now without artillery and numbering only two hundred strong, Vaughn’s Confederates moved on, allowing Gillem to enter Wytheville without firing a shot.21 To discourage reinforcements, Gillem sent the 11th Kentucky east to tear up railroad tracks for ten miles toward Lynchburg. Then he torched the Wytheville depot, with its immense amounts of ammunition, food, and medical supplies. Among other town buildings burned was a house of worship used to store ordnance, referred to by locals as “the ordnance church.” Its “sacred character,” wrote Gillem, “did not protect its warlike contents.” Observing the illumination at night from a hillside, the bluecoats thought it a “spectacular scene never to be forgotten.”22 Stoneman concentrated his forces at Mount Airy, Virginia, on December 17. From there he detached Col. Harvey M. Buckley’s brigade of Burbridge’s command to gallop east along the railroad for twenty-five miles to destroy whatever could be demolished of the lead mines near Max Meadows. The mines— ironically named the Union Lead Mines Company—supplied an estimated 30 20. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 222–23; ORS, 65:613. 21. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:559; OR, 45(1):813, 820; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 223. 22. OR, 45(1):820–21.

The Saltworks

341

percent of the lead required by the Confederacy but were weakly defended because of the government’s faith in its ability to move troops quickly by rail. Although some elements of General Vaughn’s brigade—roughly treated recently in East Tennessee—stood ready on a mountaintop nearby, Vaughn refused to intervene as twenty-five of Buckley’s cavalrymen swam their horses across New River and destroyed much of the mining equipment. Buckley’s raiders then rejoined their regiment, which afterward rode to rejoin the main column.23 Stoneman’s remaining objective was to destroy “the far-flung salt-works.” Riding by different roads, the brigades of Gillem and Burbridge rendezvoused the next morning twelve miles above Marion. The commander ordered Burbridge to take the van of the column and Gillem the rear. Soon Burbridge’s cavalry came under fire from Breckinridge’s two thousand troops out of Saltville. Just as Stoneman had hoped, the Kentuckian had left the town and its works weakly defended, mostly by the home-guard reserve of four hundred men. Basil Duke, who was with Breckinridge, believed the general failed to concentrate Confederate forces at Saltville because he thought it “left every other point at the mercy of the enemy.” So “with his usual daring,” he came “out [to] seek battle.” As the Federals fell back toward Marion, Breckinridge’s troopers took a strong position one mile east of Marion and engaged Burbridge’s cavalry. The fighting continued until nightfall, when Gillem arrived, and resumed at dawn.24 That morning Stoneman had sent Gillem by way of a road over Walker’s Mountain around Breckinridge’s left flank to cut him off from Saltville. But before the general had reached the mountaintop, Stoneman recalled him because of incessant heavy fighting at Marion. By the time Gillem returned in a drenching rain and took a position south of Marion behind Burbridge’s right flank, darkness had halted the fighting. Now the graybacks were almost out of ammunition. During the night Breckinridge slipped away toward Saltville, with General Duke in the advance. But Breckinridge blundered into Buckley’s brigade just returning from the destruction of the lead mines. So erroneously believing that he was surrounded by Stoneman’s entire force, Breckinridge escaped down an unguarded road, got lost in the mountains, and finally wandered into North Carolina. Some of his “hungry, cold, sleepy, wet, muddy 23. Ibid., 808, 811, 818, 821, 826, 830; Ralph W. Donnelly, “The Confederate Lead Mines at Wythe County, Virginia,” Civil War History 5 (Dec. 1959): 403, 410–12. 24. Duke, Reminiscences, 190; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 561; W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 473; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:559; Mason, Twelfth Ohio, 91–93; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 607–11.

342

East Tennessee and Beyond

and mad” Kentuckians felt that the former vice president had “out-generaled himself.”25 That same rainy night some bewildered bluecoats, mostly former Confederates, left Marion bound for East Tennessee. They had heard a rumor that Stoneman, as in Georgia, now found himself stranded and was about to surrender. Fearing for their lives—as deserters they believed they could be shot— they “took to the mountains,” stayed a while at home, and then rejoined their regiment weeks later at Knoxville.26 On the night of December 19, Stoneman concentrated his army near Glade Spring. He instructed Burbridge to take the road entering Saltville on the north. Stoneman and Gillem would follow a roundabout off-the-road route before emerging onto the road entering the saltworks south of Saltville. The following afternoon Gillem moved to within fi fteen hundred yards of Fort Breckinridge, an array of rifle pits and other works along a steep, rugged hill guarding the saltworks. The general arranged his troops for the assault: the 9th Tennessee dismounted on a hill to the left, the artillery supported by the 8th Tennessee on a hill to the right, and the 13th Tennessee ready to move directly up the road.27 To signal Burbridge of Gillem’s arrival, Stoneman ordered up an artillery piece so he could personally direct a salvo upon the enemy. He also sent a staff officer to Burbridge, requesting an immediate, vigorous assault. The general replied that he would attack in a half hour. Meanwhile Gillem dismounted a battalion of the 8th Tennessee to drive back graycoats harassing his artillery from a wooded ravine. That accomplished, he ordered the battalion, supported by a 13th Tennessee battalion, to advance toward the fort by capturing a hill to the bastion’s immediate right.28 Relying on Burbridge’s word to attack in thirty minutes, Stoneman directed Stacy and two battalions of the 13th Tennessee “to make a detour to the left, dash into town, commence burning, shooting, &c., and make as much noise and produce as much confusion as possible.” Stoneman ordered the remainder of the 13th and the 9th Tennessee to dismount and attack the enemy in front of the saltworks. But darkness, rain, fog, and bitter cold slowed their movement. 25. OR, 45(1):821; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 240–41; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 563–64; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 224–25. 26. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 224–25. 27. OR, 45(1):812; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 225. 28. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 228; OR, 45(1):822.

The Saltworks

343

Stacy’s mounted battalions, however, rode swiftly into Saltville, defended mostly by militia and teamsters. In the darkness and the elements, the graycoats first mistook Stacy’s cavalry for their own, then quickly surrendered.29 Stacy dismounted his troopers and left most of them to torch the town while he and a select squad led their horses slowly up a steep hill to within a hundred yards of Fort Breckinridge. Then they mounted and charged the defenders, jumping over rifle pits and riding to the gorge of the saltworks. The home guards evacuated before midnight, leaving Stacy’s soldiers behind to torch everything that would burn. Reporting on the battle later, Stoneman gave “Colonel Stacy and the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry . . . credit [for] having acted the most conspicuous part.”30 For much of the next day, bluecoats used sledgehammers to demolish large salt kettles measuring “an inch” thick at “the edge and from two to three inches at the bottom.” Gillem’s brigade labored at the upper works and Burbridge’s at the lower. Altogether they broke 788 of 916 kettles, burned all buildings related to the saltworks, and destroyed 92,000 bushels of salt. Gillem’s men filled the two copper-lined 160-foot-deep wells with “12 pounder shells and railroad iron.” The engineer of the saltworks—a unionist serving there to get out of the army—assisted the Federals before leaving with them for Tennessee.31 That afternoon a blinding snowstorm hit the vicinity. The troops had neither tents nor any other shelter, and most of the buildings by now had been burned. That night the men also lacked heat because Stoneman, fearing Breckinridge’s return, forbade campfires except within the fort. Some lucky staff officers from the 13th Tennessee found a recently deserted house whose dwellers had left behind the amenities of home. To their delight the house had a fireplace, two beds, books, a running clock, and a well-stocked pantry. After supper and amiable conversation around the fireplace, the men took turns sleeping five or six crosswise in each bed.32 The next morning, three days before Christmas, Stoneman’s cavalry left Saltville: Gillem’s brigade through Poor Valley to East Tennessee, and Burbridge’s command through Heyter’s Gap to eastern Kentucky. Both generals possessed authority to destroy enemy property en route, but their men lacked 29. OR, 45(1):812, 822. 30. Ibid., 812, 813, 822. 31. Ibid., 813, 823; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 227–28. 32. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 227–28.

344

East Tennessee and Beyond

the energy and traveled in terrible weather. One trooper of the 12th Ohio with Burbridge recalled that “scores of men had their hands and feet frozen, many . . . so severe as to finally result in amputation of one or both feet.” General Duke, back from North Carolina, followed Burbridge’s bluecoats for fifty miles to the Kentucky border. He later described the severity of the weather in which his “men beat their breasts to promote a more vigorous circulation” and of hundreds of dead enemy horsemen “along the road side, [with] their limbs literally rotted with the cold.” By the time he turned back, Duke had lost more men to the weather than the one hundred prisoners he brought in with him.33 A mile north of Saltville, Gillem’s troops crossed the north fork of the Holston River and moved along the river to Moccasin Gap before taking the Carter Valley road to Knoxville. On their return over muddy and frozen roads, they averaged forty-one miles a day. In the freezing rain and snow, they fought frostbite and lived off the land. Writing of their return, Gillem praised his men: “For eleven days our horses were not unsaddled; we marched day and night, halting only . . . to rest and feed; more than 300 . . . were frost-bitten; yet during the entire march not a murmur or complaint was heard from these brave men.”34 They arrived in Knoxville on December 29, ending an expedition of 461 miles; only forty of the original horses returned. Gillem’s cavalry replaced the other mounts with horses seized from farms along the way, all eventually branded “U.S.” once the expedition returned to Knoxville. The Federals also accumulated numerous camp followers, including blacks and unionist refugees. Despite heavy losses of men by the enemy, mostly as prisoners of war, Gillem reported the loss of only four men killed and twenty wounded.35 In his report of the raid to Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck, Stoneman detailed great material losses for the Confederacy. Regarding the railroad, he claimed that “Rebeldom” had lost all its railroad bridges from south of the New River almost to Knoxville, thirteen trains and their locomotives, as well as others without locomotives. Means of transport seized included two thousand horses and one thousand mules, and numerous “wagon and ambulance 33. Duke, Reminiscences, 191; Duke, Morgan’s Cavalry, 564–65; Mason, Twelfth Ohio, 93; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 617, 620. 34. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 228–29; ORS, 65:614; OR, 45(1):813–14, 823–24. 35. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 229–30.

The Saltworks

345

trains.” As for quartermaster and commissary stores, he wrote that his army had destroyed “all the depots of supplies in Southwest Virginia.”36 Stoneman captured nineteen pieces of artillery, three thousand muskets, and hundreds of sabers. Most of all, his raid destroyed as much as humanly possible of the lead works near Wytheville—which remained out of operation for almost three months—and the saltworks at Saltville. Beyond these, he wrote in a humorous vein, his men demolished “four pestiferous secession printing presses” and captured two Rebel newspaper editors, whom he sent back “as a Christmas present to the proprietor of the Knoxville (Rebel) Ventilator,” Parson Brownlow.37 Although the Confederates downplayed their material losses at Saltville and at the Wytheville lead mines, they admitted the severe loss of government stores at Bristol, Tennessee, and Abingdon, Virginia. At the saltworks the most immediate consequence was the bluecoats’ spoilage of more than fifty thousand bushels of salt ready to be shipped. But perhaps most significantly, it took the Confederates two months to resume operation of the Virginia & East Tennessee Railroad.38 Following Bulls Gap, Barzilliah Stacy replaced the fatally wounded William Ingerton as colonel of the 13th Tennessee, and Schofield sent General Stoneman to operate out of Knoxville. Stoneman had plans to raid into Virginia and the Carolinas, the only part of which Schofield approved being a raid against the saltworks in southwestern Virginia. To conduct his raid the general utilized General Gillem and Miller’s brigade at Knoxville and Burbridge’s division in eastern Kentucky against Breckinridge’s command in upper East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. The two Union commands converged on Bristol, with Gillem defeating John Hunt Morgan’s old command at Kingsport and Burbridge burning government stores at an evacuated Bristol before pursuing General Vaughn at Zollicoffer. After Vaughn slipped around Burbridge, both Federal columns rode toward Abingdon. En route to Saltville Gillem and his Tennesseans fought at Marion and Wytheville before Stoneman concentrated his column at Mount Airy and sent 36. OR, 45(1):813–14. 37. Ibid.; Donnelly, “Confederate Lead Mines,” 404. 38. W. C. Davis, Breckinridge, 476–77; Duke, Reminiscences, 192; Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers, 242; Guerrant, Bluegrass Confederate, 617.

346

East Tennessee and Beyond

Burbridge’s Kentuckians to destroy the lead mines. On December 19 Stoneman concentrated near Glad Spring and ordered Burbridge to enter Saltville from the north and Gillem from the south. General Breckinridge had already evacuated the saltworks, leaving only a small force there before its capture that night. The next day the Federals demolished as much of the works as possible before a blinding snowstorm struck. On the twenty-second Gillem and Stoneman rode toward Tennessee while Burbridge headed toward Kentucky. As Basil Duke, with Morgan’s former command, pursued Burbridge and captured one hundred Federals, hundreds in both armies suffered severe frostbite, and many died. Many of Gillem’s Tennesseans also perished or lost limbs.

CHAPTER 22

Stoneman’s Last Raid

F

ollowing the Saltville raid, Miller’s brigade of the 8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee camped just east of Knoxville. Some men died from exposure experienced during that expedition; others resigned because they “felt uneasy about . . . affairs at home.” Because of these losses the brigade recruited and reorganized. Its men erected winter quarters, cleared surrounding grounds to prevent surprise attacks, and its officers enforced “discipline and . . . drill.” Despite “Southern ladies”—as Dr. Ramsey called the better classes of proConfederate females—being “proverbially aristocratic in their social relations,” cavalrymen formed friendships with some of the city’s young women. This allowed the men a chance “to attend . . . parties and places of amusement and make pleasant evening calls.” Where possible families from the upper counties where Rebels still roamed joined their solder husbands, sons, and brothers.1 General Gillem moved the 9th Tennessee east to Dandridge to combat guerrillas and outlaws. Recruiter Daniel Ellis briefly joined the 13th Tennessee as captain of Company A, “composed of old friends and neighbors from Carter County.” But he soon received orders to lead a detachment to the mountains of Carter and Johnson counties and offer deserters from the regiment a pardon if they would return to the ranks. In mid-February 1865 Ellis returned with what he called “a motley assemblage” of 125 individuals and forty horses. His group included ex-Union officers and soldiers, Rebel deserters, members of the “hated [Confederate] home guards” hoping to avoid a worse fate than what they might receive at home, and blacks wishing to enlist.2 1. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 231–33; TICW, 1:231–33, 344; House, Very Violent Rebel, 18; Ramsey, Autobiography and Letters, 166–68. 2. Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 360–61.

348

East Tennessee and Beyond

In spring 1865 Stoneman commanded the District of East Tennessee; Gillem, the district’s cavalry; and Tillson, an infantry division at Knoxville. With input from Generals Grant and Thomas, Stoneman aimed to execute his original plan by raiding into the Carolinas, cutting the enemy lines of communication, and freeing prisoners at Salisbury. But he modified his plan because of Sherman’s march north from Savannah and the anticipated retreat of Lee’s army from around Richmond. Stoneman intended to again destroy stretches of the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad, supplying Lee from southwestern Virginia and offering him a route of retreat. Then he would turn back into western North Carolina to burn undisturbed enemy supplies such as those at Salisbury. Grant advised the general to travel as “light as possible” since he went “to destroy and not to fight battles” and to stay “between garrisons in East Tennessee and the enemy.”3 Stoneman spent weeks during the winter collecting three thousand cavalrymen and enough mounts for the long raid. Grant finally issued Thomas an order on March 19 to start Stoneman on his way. Two days later the expedition set out from Knoxville and rode slowly toward Strawberry Plains in a rainstorm that intensified into a “furious hailstorm” that night. The next day Stoneman concentrated his command at Mossy Creek and on the twenty-third moved to Morristown, where his horsemen received five days’ rations of mostly bacon and coffee, one day’s forage, and an additional set of horseshoes. Each company received two pack mules, one for ammunition and another for cooking utensils. Each cavalryman carried sixty-two rounds of ammunition. No extra baggage was allowed except for an overcoat.4 Gillem’s cavalry consisted of three brigades: Colonel Palmer’s First (10th Michigan, 12th Ohio, and 15th Pennsylvania); Brig. Gen. Simeon B. Brown’s Second (11th and 12th Kentucky and 11th Michigan); and Col. John K. Miller’s Third (8th and 13th Tennessee). Along with Gillem, Stoneman traveled with Lt. Theodore Mallaby and a Lieutenant Rice, both members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who helped the general communicate with his commanders. 3. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:560–61; OR, 49(1):330, 616, 777. 4. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 233; F. H. Mason, “General Stoneman’s Last Campaign and the Pursuit of Jefferson Davis,” MOLLUS, Commandery of Ohio, Sketches of War History of 1861–1865, 7 vols. (Cincinnati, 1888), 2:23; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 1; H. K. Weand, “Our Last Campaign and Pursuit of Jeff Davis,” in The History of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, ed. Charles H. Kirk (Philadelphia, 1906), 492.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

349

They carried flags of different sizes and colors used for various distances and backgrounds and a telescope with which to see the signals.5 Tillson’s infantry included Union regiments from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, including the 2nd and 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, commanded by Colonel Kirk, with batteries provided by soldiers from the Midwest and the 1st U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. To protect East Tennessee during the expedition and to oppose Lee if he retreated south, the army transferred General Stanley with two infantry divisions from Huntsville, Alabama.6 On March 26 Miller moved his brigade ahead to Elizabethtown, about thirty-five miles on the turnpike from Boone, North Carolina. He gave his men from the area an opportunity to visit with their families during the weekend. They scattered to places such as Doe River Cove, Stony Creek, Taylor Town, and Valley Forge. The other brigades followed, each taking different roads to find more forage.7 The next day the entire command advanced along the Watauga River over land where each man depended on “a steady hand and a surefooted horse.” The roads were little more than trails running along the edge of mountains and bordering the treetops. Not a single rider was lost, but a few mules and horses fell over the mountainside. Aware of the raiders’ approach, unionists built fires at dangerous turns in the roads and at “difficult fords [to locate] over . . . mountain streams.” Occasionally riders witnessed an instant “column of fire” as flames ignited an old dry pine tree. At midnight the command bivouacked on the eastern slope of Iron Mountain.8 Approaching Boone the next morning, Stoneman learned of a home-guard meeting, possibly the first drill since local Rebels lost one of their two companies a few weeks earlier at nearby Sugar Grove. Before by building enough “campfires at daybreak . . . to warm a large army,” Capt. James Champion of the 13th Tennessee, fifty of his men, and twenty-five recruits from Watauga County deceived the encamped company into surrendering. Now the 12th Kentucky easily surprised Boone’s inhabitants and captured the other com5. Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:561–62; Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, 396–99. 6. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 11. 7. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 233–34. 8. OR, 49(1):330, 337–38; Weand, “Our Last Campaign,” 498; Howard A. Buzby, “With Gillem’s Tennesseans on the Yadkin,” in The History of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, ed. Charles H. Kirk (Philadelphia, 1906), 520–22.

350

East Tennessee and Beyond

pany along with the town. That night a Union surgeon amputated a bluecoat’s arm and doctored five wounded graybacks at James D. Councill’s home—for a day a hospital and military headquarters. The next morning Gillem ordered the town’s jailhouse prisoners released and the jail burned and detailed a squad to escort the home-guard prisoners back to East Tennessee.9 Because of the need for food and forage, Stoneman deployed his brigades by different routes toward Wilkesboro: the First down the mountain east by way of Deep Gap; the Second and the artillery, followed by the Third, south by way of Flat Gap. Riding in advance through fertile Yadkin Valley—often referred to as “Happy Valley”—Brown’s brigade arrived about 9:00 p.m. at Patterson’s Mills, a regional supplier of cloth. The general left behind a guard to protect some food and forage for Miller’s brigade. As Miller’s Third departed, it burned the mill and its contents, a fire Stoneman disapproved because owner Rufus Patterson, a religious “neutral,” had supplied cloth to both sides. Along the Yadkin Valley blue-coated squads scattered to impress horses and mules and to torch a number of cotton mills. Planter James Gwyn, residing north of the Yadkin River, wrote that troops “on the other side . . . acted somewhat worse, but they behaved well in the main.”10 Suspecting that officers lacked control over their troops, Stoneman decided to review the mostly Kentuckian and Tennessean Second and Third Brigades. Stationing himself alone on a small hill, he ordered them to ride past on parade through the mud during a heavy downpour. Unfortunately for the officers, their men had found corn whiskey stills. To ease their weary limbs, some inebriated horsemen had seized carriages and coaches, leaving their mounts in the care of friends. As several types of carriages drove past the general, “boots [stuck] out in all directions.” An infuriated Stoneman intermittently halted the column to reduce in rank a few captains and lieutenants. Finally he ordered a general halt, and those on four wheels “tumbled out of [the] carriages.”11 West of Wilkesboro on March 29, the brigades communicated by signal flags across the Yadkin (Rice had followed Palmer while Mullaby remained with Gillem). With the river still impassable, Stoneman ordered them to con9. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 16–18; Dugger, War Trails, 123–24; Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 192–95. 10. Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 196–97; OR, 49(1):330–31; J. P. Arthur, A History of Watauga County, North Carolina, with Sketches of Prominent Families (Richmond, 1915), 177; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 247 (Gwyn cited). 11. Buzby, “With Gillem’s Tennesseans,” 522–27.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

351

tinue northeast toward Jonesville. That night the 12th Ohio, one of Palmer’s regiments, captured Wilkesboro without resistance. On April 1 Stoneman and Gillem occupied Jonesville, on the bluffs across from Elkin, which Palmer secured. Troopers on both sides of the river later remembered seeing a cotton mill at Jonesville employing sixty or more girls, who waved and “flirted” with the men from its windows. The next morning at Rockford, Brown’s and Miller’s brigades forded the Yadkin, reuniting the raiders.12 Now their destination was Virginia. Stoneman’s entire column passed through Dodson, an unpretentious village, and reached Mount Airy, North Carolina. Some men raided the post offices of the two towns so that they could amuse themselves along the way by reading the mail and newspapers. After Gillem learned that an army wagon train had just left Mount Airy moving toward Hillsville, Virginia, only eighteen miles north, he deployed detachments to capture it. Following an initial failure of pursuit by one detachment, a second one captured seventeen wagons laden with forage.13 Meanwhile Tillson’s infantry and heavy artillery, 4,500 soldiers strong, reached the mouth of Roan Creek near North Carolina. There they blocked the mountain passes against an enemy attack upon the rear of Stoneman’s force. On April 3 Colonel Kirk and the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry occupied Boone, fortifying the courthouse. Kirk lodged at the ever-useful James D. Councill residence while his troopers searched for food, especially meat, throughout the town. Three days later Tillson moved on to join Kirk and to blockade the passes through Watauga County. He stationed 200 of the Carolinians at Watauga Gap, where Kirk erected a log fort of timbers taken from a nearby summer house.14 Two days after Lee began evacuating Richmond and Petersburg and retreating southwestward, Gillem moved out at daybreak to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains to Hillsville. Also on April 4, Brig. Gen. John Echols, commanding gray forces in southwestern Virginia, ordered a concentration of his four thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry. At Hillsville Gillem ordered Miller to select five hundred of his Tennesseans to push northeast and attack Wytheville, destroy its depot of supplies, and burn nearby bridges at Reedy Creek and Max Meadows.15 12. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 28, 31. 13. OR, 49(1):331; Weand, “Our Last Campaign,” 494–95. 14. OR, 49(1):339. 15. Ibid., 331–32.

352

East Tennessee and Beyond

After struggling to ford the New River, Miller galloped into Wytheville at daybreak, having ridden fifty-five miles. His men burned the depot’s ordnance, quartermaster, and commissary stores. That afternoon they ripped up railroad tracks and burned bridges nearby. But before dark a superior force of General Vaughn’s infantry and cavalry drove in Miller’s pickets and attacked some dismounted cavalrymen, causing the Federals to retreat with the loss of thirty-five casualties. Miller retraced his ride from Hillsville and easily forded the New River on his return. Then as instructed by Gillem, he proceeded to Taylorsville in Patrick County, bordering North Carolina.16 Around midnight the main column arrived at Christianburg on the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad. Early the next morning Gillem ordered Palmer’s brigade to destroy the railroad east of the town while Brown’s brigade burned track to the west. Gillem also deployed detachments of Miller’s brigade to demolish the bridges and ferries over the New River and the Roanoke River. On the fifth Miller’s men destroyed the repaired facilities of the lead mines near Max Meadows. By sunset the following day, the bluecoats had destroyed trestles and bridges for ninety miles of rail traffic from Wytheville to Salem.17 The main column began its return to the Old North State on April 7. Two days later the brigades concentrated at Danbury, North Carolina. Little damage occurred in the withdrawal, though the soldiers did seize food, horses, and forage. By the time the column arrived at Germantown on the tenth, blacks following it numbered four hundred. Suspecting the contraband might endanger his troops if he engaged the enemy, Gillem sent them to East Tennessee, accompanied by an escort. He also ordered Palmer’s brigade to Salem to destroy textile mills engaged in manufacturing military clothing and to cut the North Carolina Central Railroad to Greensboro and the Danville & Greensboro Railroad.18 Easter week found the main column moving toward Salisbury, a significant railroad junction housing an army depot, an ordnance works, a notorious prison, and several military hospitals. At the old Moravian town of Bethania on the evening of April 10, troopers searched for food in the homes of worship16. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 235–37. 17. OR, 49(1):331–32; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 34–36; Luther S. Trowbridge, A Brief History of the Tenth Michigan (Detroit, 1905), 39–40; ORS, 65:614. 18. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 37–38; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 236–37; OR, 49(1):332–33.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

353

ers in their churches. Continuing their march, the Federals scattered a small enemy detachment at Shallow Ford, west of Winston, and a home guard of old men and boys at Mocksville, where they burned a cotton mill.19 Two miles from Salisbury on April 12 at Grants Creek bridge—whose flooring had been removed—500–800 soldiers supported by artillery, led by Maj. Gen. William M. Gardner, temporarily commanding at Salisbury, resisted the crossing of Gillem’s cavalry. Gardner had deployed a few hundred more men in detachments of about 150 each at other roads and crossings. According to one report, his soldiers consisted of “ ‘galvanized Irish,’ recruited [earlier] from among the [town’s] Federal prisoners . . . , artisans in the government employ . . . , Junior reserves, and . . . citizens” defending their homes. Gillem rolled up his artillery and concentrated his ranks before deploying squadrons above and below the creek to outflank the Rebels. Once these detachments engaged the enemy, Miller’s dismounted brigade marched at the double-quick down the road to the bridge.20 As Gardner’s forces fell back, Union troopers below the bridge replaced the span’s flooring. Now Brown’s brigade pushed forward to support Miller. Gardner’s orderly retreat quickly became a rout as his men scattered into the town and beyond to a woods. Most of the “galvanized Irish” fired above the bluecoats, left a battery without support, surrendered as a unit, and cheered Old Glory. Altogether the pursuing mounted bluecoats, with sabers drawn, captured 1,200 troops and eighteen pieces of artillery.21 In the undefended town of Salisbury, warehouses contained an array of supplies such as 75,000 army uniforms and 250,000 English-made blankets. Foodstuff included 100,000 pounds of salt, 50,000 bushels of wheat, and 27,000 pounds of rice. For weeks shipments had arrived from such threatened cities as Richmond, Columbia, and Raleigh. Stoneman ordered that much of the food and clothing be removed to the street for blacks and poor whites to help themselves.22 19. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 46–47; John G. Barrett, The Civil War in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1963), 356. 20. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 514; Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 199; Barrett, Civil War in North Carolina, 356–57; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 237. 21. Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 200; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 63; Weand, “Our Last Campaign,” 504; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 238; Barrett, Civil War in North Carolina, 357. 22. OR, 49(1):333–34.

354

East Tennessee and Beyond

On the thirteenth Stoneman ordered all warehouses and arsenals in the town burned. Meanwhile Miller’s Tennesseans destroyed the railroad to the east and Palmer’s Pennsylvanians those to the south toward Charlotte. For hours, one observer wrote, Salisbury was “marked during the day by a column of dense smoke, and at night by the glare from burning stores.” But Stoneman carefully guarded personal property by posting soldiers throughout the town and as requested at individual households.23 Freeing the prisoners at Salisbury Prison—an old converted cotton mill and some adjunct buildings—had been one of the general’s initial reasons for undertaking the expedition. But two months before he arrived, the Confederates had either exchanged or relocated all of them except for the sick and the lame. They moved another five hundred prisoners to Charlotte before Stoneman’s arrival. The compound housed only a few inmates when the bluecoats entered its walls. Still, out of a sense of justice, Stoneman ordered that it be burned.24 That afternoon the expedition, pulling eleven of the eighteen captured artillery guns not destroyed, departed Salisbury. Palmer’s brigade as ordered rode south toward Charlotte to cut the railroad. The main column moved west toward Statesville. That night it found the town “mostly in the possession of the women and children,” the men having hidden in “the friendly forest.” Some of the troopers burned the newspaper office of the Iredell Express. Stoneman, having been sick at Salisbury, arrived by carriage about midnight and, before turning in, wrote his final report on the expedition. With all his intentions and more now accomplished, he would return to Knoxville.25 From Statesville Stoneman and his escort accompanied hundreds of enemy prisoners—including mere boys, old men, and feeble veterans captured at home—and black camp followers as well as captured artillery. According to the general, he had accumulated enough horses and mules “to haul off all of our captives, mount a portion of the [freed Union] prisoners and about a thousand contrabands.” Destroying railroad tracks along the way, Gillem left Stoneman and continued toward Morganton. Now in full command, he ordered Palmer, arriving at Statesville about midnight, to Lincolnton, a town of a thou23. Ibid.; Mason, “Stoneman’s Last Campaign,” 29; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 248. 24. Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 56–57; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 239; Barrett, Civil War in North Carolina, 359. 25. OR, 49(1):324; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 69–70.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

355

sand residents to the southeast, which he intended to use as his base of operations until he received further orders.26 East of Morganton at the Catawba River, Gillem encountered a burnt bridge, Rocky Ford blocked by a single piece of artillery, and rifle pits with three hundred soldiers belonging to Col. Thomas Walton accompanied by Maj. Gen. John P. McCown, on leave at the town. He dispatched two battalions of the 8th Tennessee: Maj. Christopher Kenner’s upstream two miles to cross the river and reach the enemy’s rear, and Maj. William J. Denton’s to dismount and find shelter near the bridge. After Gillem’s battery disabled the enemy’s artillery and forced the graycoats from their rifle pits, Denton’s men occupied the ford. The two battalions pursued the Rebels, killing a few, capturing about fifty, and scattering the others while losing at least twenty of their own killed or wounded.27 At Morganton Gillem’s cavalry retaliated for the heavy resistance. Plundering spanned beyond their search for food to the theft of personal items often revealed by slaves. Much of the bounty emanated from treasure hunts for valuables recently buried by the townsfolk for safekeeping. Female camp followers from nearby mountains joined in the looting as well. One account described them as “the lazy and disloyal elements that inhabit [the] ‘South Mountains’ around the town” and as “an ignorant, illiterate, uncultivated set.” The women stole household items such as “clothing, bedding [and] dishes.” Claiming to be unionists, they “conspired . . . with the Yankees” and encouraged them “in the work of plunder.”28 Gillem moved west on April 19 toward Asheville by way of Swannanoa Gap. The following day he found the gap blocked by downed trees, four pieces of artillery, and five hundred graybacks under Brig. Gen. James G. Martin, the energetic one-armed commander of the District of Western North Carolina. But these Rebels were reluctant to fight after having heard rumors of Lee’s surrender in Virginia. Following a standoff of two days, Gillem had Miller’s brigade demonstrate while he marched south with the other two brigades. Meanwhile some of Miller’s stragglers had gotten off the beaten trail and ranged as far as Rutherfordton. Despite a direct order, Brig. Gen. John B. Palmer’s bri26. OR, 49(1):334–35. 27. Ibid., 335; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 76–77; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 249. 28. Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 250; Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 224; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 78–79.

356

East Tennessee and Beyond

gade of Martin’s command refused to pursue the Federal column. With scant resistance, Gillem passed through Howard’s Gap of the Blue Ridge at sunset on April 22 and reached the rear of Martin’s position.29 Gillem’s advance captured three hundred stand of arms at Hendersonville and overtook four pieces of artillery and its infantry guard bound for Asheville. At Hendersonville the bluecoats heard news of Lee’s surrender and of Lincoln’s assassination, the latter leaving “little room for the joy that would otherwise have filled [their] hearts.” By now they had also heard a rumor that Sherman and Joseph Johnston had agreed to a truce.30 Palmer’s brigade arrived at Rutherfordton on the morning of April 25. The Pennsylvanians were shocked at the suffering inflicted by some of Miller’s horsemen during a two-day stay. One wrote, “These Tennesseeans . . . suffered terrible cruelties at the hands of the rebels.” But they have “repaid what they had suffered by an indiscriminate pillage.” He felt that “the sympathy” Palmer’s men “used to feel for the loyal Tennesseans [was] being rapidly transferred to their enemy.” The northerner concluded that the Tennessee unionists were now of “little military” usefulness and “in no condition to fight.”31 Gillem left Hendersonville at noon on April 23, hoping to attack Asheville that evening. But that afternoon he received a flag of truce from General Martin based on an “official notification” of an armistice approved by Johnston and Sherman. The Tennessean halted and camped south of town. By invitation he and his staff stayed at the home of Vance and Mary Brown. After dinner that evening, the officers and Vance Brown smoked their pipes and chatted before joining the family in playing cards. Afterward they listened to the Browns’ daughter Maria sing some Confederate tunes and then to the 13th Tennessee’s band perform “some beautiful old Union pieces.”32 The general took it upon himself to return through Asheville toward the Union base at Greeneville, Tennessee, only sixty miles away. The next morning he met Martin and asked for three days’ rations, amounting to nine thousand rations, “to avoid the necessity of stripping the citizens of their scanty supplies.” Martin granted the request but asked in turn for the return of his 29. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 239; Barrett, Civil War in North Carolina, 364; Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 226–27. 30. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 240; OR, 49(1):335. 31. Weand, “Our Last Campaign,” 507. 32. Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 227–28; Mary Brown cited in Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 254.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

357

artillery captured after the truce. The Federal commander politely refused and reminded the Rebel general that but for the armistice, he could have occupied Asheville. On April 25 Gillem marched toward Greeneville. In the rear of his column was “an immense train of plunder—animals of all sorts, and carriages and wagons piled with property—household goods and treasures.” One of the wagons held “no less than fifteen negro babies” as their mothers marched among the black camp followers. Once underway, Gillem summoned Palmer to join him.33 When Gillem reached Marshall, a courier overtook him with an order from Sherman to move south in pursuit of the fleeing Jefferson Davis. Gillem assigned the two brigades riding with him to General Brown and left with an escort for Knoxville: he had been granted a leave of absence from the army to take a seat in the legislature, to which he had been elected in March. When Brown entered Asheville on April 26, Martin opposed his passage back through the town. But the Federals overcame a small force, taking sixty as prisoners, before plundering the town, confiscating all weapons, and burning an armory. During the ransacking of Asheville, Cornelia Phillips Spencer claimed that “[t]he Tenth and Eleventh Michigan regiments . . . won for themselves . . . a reputation that should damn them to everlasting fame.” Later Brown sent his prisoners under escort to Knoxville along with his “sick and disabled, [his] artillery and all superfluous baggage.” Stoneman, now at Knoxville, replaced Gillem with Colonel Palmer as commander of the division. One of Palmer’s first acts reputed Brown’s pillage of Asheville in a dispatch to General Martin, stating that Brown should have forwarded Martin news of the armistice’s termination before occupying the city. Palmer also ordered the release of the general and the other Asheville prisoners then en route to Knoxville.34 Brown’s main column crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains on April 30, pausing once on the peak of Caesar’s Head Mountain in South Carolina. The next day it joined Palmer’s brigade at Anderson. The colonel, displeased with the foraging by the southern Federals, wrote that officers of Miller’s and Brown’s brigades had “for the most part lost all control over their men.” He claimed that “a large number of men and some of the officers” of those units “devote 33. Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 229; Van Noppen, Stoneman’s Last Raid, 84–85. 34. OR, 49(1):336, 546–47; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 240–41; BDTGA, 2:334; Spencer, Last Ninety Days, 231–33; Inscoe and McKinney, Confederate Appalachia, 257; J. P. Arthur, Western North Carolina: A History (Asheville, 1914), 620.

358

East Tennessee and Beyond

themselves exclusively to pillaging and destroying property.” Still he felt that discipline could not be “restored in the field . . . while the command [was] living on the country.”35 Much of the problem at Anderson, according to one resident, revolved around “three hundred bottles of wine and brandy stored there . . . in a room just off the corner of the square.” Wealthy Charlestonians expecting Sherman had shipped their finest toddy to the town to prevent its falling into the hands of the Yankees. But Yankees and Tories at Anderson discovered the stash, imbibed plenty, turned their canteen water into wine, and flooded the charming town square with the residue before initiating a rampage. Although Mrs. James W. Wilkinson, an eyewitness, thought that Anderson suffered more at the hands of the raiders than had other communities, she still believed that it had “suffer[ed] more from [Confederate] raiders” than it possibly could have from an absence of “Yankee discipline.”36 Hoping to prevent Davis’s escape, Palmer detached the 13th Tennessee to cut the railroad at Athens, Georgia. Two days before they arrived on May 3, Brig. Gen. Alexander W. Reynolds, commanding in northeastern Georgia with headquarters at Athens, opened the commissary store to the public. But the impoverished “majority got nothing” and neither did discharged graybacks arriving the next day expecting “to get rations.” Johnny Rebs and “the clamorous poor” were about to riot before the Union cavalry rode in from cutting track to prevent it. The Federals in turn “became furious” because of “the empty commissary department.” While controlling others, they “search[ed] people’s houses & took their provisions” and more. After the 13th’s officers lunched with General Reynolds, the bluecoats moved on to Lexington. There Colonel Stacy summoned his men for inspection and found twenty-two stolen watches, which he ordered returned to Athens.37 On May 6 the entire brigade went to Washington, Georgia, barely missing Jefferson Davis, who had left earlier. The Federals then moved to Crawfordville, home of the Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, away at the time. Two days later they departed for Milledgeville, the Georgia capital; for eight days many of the officers enjoyed the hospitality of a number 35. OR, 49(1):548. 36. Buzby, “With Gillem’s Tennesseans,” 522–27; Wilkinson to Mrs. D. E. Huger, in Smith et al., Mason Smith Family Letters, 208. 37. ORS, 65:615; Fanny Atkisson to Mrs. Ambrose Buber, May 18, 1865, in Coleman, Athens, 1861–1865, 116–17; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 242.

Stoneman’s Last Raid

359

of middle Georgia’s grand planters. Afterward the men set their sights for Tennessee. Stopping for four days at Greensboro, an army supply base for Georgia, they rested and supplied themselves with “underwear and blankets”—not being partial to gray, they forewent the uniforms. The Tennesseans arrived near Knoxville on June 2, having ridden about a thousand miles through five states and criss-crossing the Allegheny Mountains.38 During his last raid, Stoneman achieved his objective of destroying the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad by burning its bridges and ripping up much of its track, thereby denying an escape route for Lee’s army at Richmond. He severely limited any further capacity to make war in western North Carolina by destroying government stores and factories and by demoralizing its citizens. But taking advantage of Stoneman’s departure from the expedition, his undisciplined and revengeful Tennesseans and Kentuckians, who had fought just as bravely as had his Pennsylvanians, afterward committed depredations at towns such as Lenoir, Morganton, and Asheville. The results of Stoneman’s well-planned and well-executed raid came too late to change the course of the war—as did the capture of Mobile and Wilson’s raid into Alabama. But the end of the war was unknown by the men doing the fighting and to their enemies until the very last. By almost any standard, had this raid occurred earlier—or had it been performed by a Confederate such as Forrest, Morgan, or Wheeler against two northern states—Stoneman would have been acclaimed a great victor and his men, heroes. 38. Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 242–49.

CHAPTER 23

Final Months

G

overnor Johnson called a statewide convention at the capitol on January 9, 1865. (It had been announced earlier for the “third Monday in December” but postponed because of Hood’s march on the city.) More than five hundred delegates from sixty counties, some clad in army blue, attended. Because of the revolutionary circumstances, delegates ignored rules of proportion— though they in theory represented counties—and voted as individuals. Even entire delegations from army units stationed at Nashville, such as Battery D, 1st Tennessee Artillery and the remaining handful of 3rd Tennessee cavalrymen, were seated. A handful of troops from Hurst’s 6th Tennessee represented four different counties in West Tennessee.1 Johnson’s supporters insisted that the delegates act as a constitutional as well as a political convention. They proposed amendments nullifying acts of the Confederacy and freeing the state’s slaves to be voted on in February 1865. Then delegates nominated a slate of candidates for state offices to be voted on in March, including William G. Brownlow for governor (earlier endorsed by the East Tennessee Union Convention at Knoxville on December 5, 1864) and members of the legislature to be voted on in March. Fourteen members of mounted regiments, along with others from the infantry, were nominated for the legislature and later elected, as was Brownlow.2 On January 7 at Decatur, the 2nd Tennessee had 200 cavalrymen. Another 1. Hamer, Tennessee, 2:594–95; Thomas B. Alexander, Political Reconstruction in Tennessee (Nashville, 1950), 26; Nashville Dispatch, Jan. 10, 1865; Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator, Dec. 14, 1864; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Dec. 12, 1864, PAJ, 7:336. 2. Hamer, Tennessee, 2:595–96; T. B. Alexander, Reconstruction in Tennessee, 26; Nashville Dispatch, Jan. 10, 1865; Hall, Andrew Johnson, 161; Johnson to Lincoln, Jan. 13, 1865, PAJ, 7:404.

Final Months

361

group of 150 mainly wounded, sick, or dismounted men was at Huntsville. And at least one company, Company L, camped at Limestone Creek near Athens, Alabama. When Colonel Prosser returned to Decatur from his pursuit of Hood’s wagon trains on the night of the sixth, he had an order from General Wilson dated January 2 to send his dismounted men to Nashville and concentrate his mounted men at Athens. He also found at Decatur his former superior in the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Cook, wounded and captured at Okolona but now exchanged.3 By the time the men of the 2nd Tennessee arrived at Athens on January 8, they were, according to one local single young woman, Mary Fielding, “boasting [of] chasing Mr. Hood nearly to Miss., [and of] taking his wagons . . . pontoons, etc., and of various other services they had rendered & would render to their country.” She wrote in her diary that “[t]hey talk as if they think we ought to give them the best we’ve got . . . for trying to subjugate us.” She accused one company, temporarily at Dr. Benjamin Maclin’s house (where she resided), of “covering” Maclin’s “dining room . . . with mud & [of having] books & papers . . . scattered all over the floor.” They had used “bureau drawers in the yard” as troughs to feed their horses and had stabled their mounts “in the kitchen and under the colonnade.” All in all she considered the regiment “the meanest in the Army.”4 On January 7 Wilson had ordered almost his entire cavalry to concentrate at Gravelly Springs, Alabama, to go into winter quarters. But for a number of reasons, only five of the Tennessee regiments (1st, 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 12th) ever reported. Others remained in Nashville (5th, 6th, and remnants of the 3rd, 7th, and 14th), while Gillem’s cavalry (8th, 9th, and 13th) operated out of Knoxville.5 Wilson selected this site “near the head of steamboat navigation at all stages of the river.” It enabled him to receive a steady supply of every sort from the North. The terrain provided good drainage, with campsites high above the river and with “sandy and gravelly” soil. The site possessed springs and streams along with an abundance of timber. The general also found the broad fields of area plantations “suitable for drill grounds.” At Gravelly Springs he hoped “to 3. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 44; Knoxville Chronicle, Apr. 29, 1879; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 218; ORS, 65:449; TICW, 1:324. 4. Fielding, “Mary Fielding Diary,” 153 (Jan. 10, 1865). 5. Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 195; TICW, 1:320, 324, 333, 336, 346–47, 350–51.

362

East Tennessee and Beyond

remount the dismounted”—estimated at seven thousand men—build up and train his troopers, and break in horses for the spring campaign.6 Wilson had his horsemen construct their own “log cabins and lean-tostables.” Thousands cut the forest with saws and axes in the rain and snow. “Great confusion and sometimes bad blood” erupted as companies competed over a stand of trees, with Wilson himself finally having to rule that trees could not be claimed until they were downed. Once the timber fell, it had to be hauled and constructed into uniform cabins, ten by fifteen feet, with chimneys and furnished with two-story bunks.7 Lieutenant Andes of the 2nd Tennessee recalled that men resented the “rigid discipline” and the “nonsensical . . . red-tape.” They complained of having to “drill and [do] a hundred other things” in addition to building the cabins and stables, all the while “living on half rations.” Another trooper reported: “One trait of Gen. Wilson’s made the whole army despise him . . . , the horses had to be well taken care of, if the men starved.” He proved this by ordering the first transports to bring in fodder instead of food. Although Wilson forbade foraging, some troopers slipped through their own lines in the darkness to supplement their rations and returned before daylight. Fortunately more boats arrived through the icy river with food before February.8 Because of demands elsewhere, Wilson eventually dispersed much of his cavalry. Except for the 1st Tennessee, ordered to Nashville at the end of its three-year enlistment, the state’s regiments moved or stayed with their divisions. Accordingly individual regiments eventually journeyed north into other areas of Middle Tennessee or to Mobile, Natchez, or even Kansas. Wilson took other divisions—all without Tennessee regiments—in mid-March on his raid into Alabama in support of Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby’s attack on Mobile. After Hurst’s resignation as commander of the 6th Tennessee and Lt. Col. William J. Smith’s assumption as his replacement, the regiment remained at Edgefield during January and February. Thereafter the unit served outside of Pulaski herding U.S. government cattle. As had happened elsewhere, some of the Tennesseans suffered with severe diarrhea, the war’s most debilitating and deadly disease. In military nomenclature Pvt. Ely F. Bassham’s service record states that “on or about the 15th of Nov. 1864 said soldier was attacked 6. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 2:164–65. 7. Ibid.; Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 195–97; Keenan, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps, 145–46; McGee, 72nd Indiana, 500–501; Crofts, Third Ohio, 186–87; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 44. 8. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 221–22.

Final Months

363

with Diarrhera while on duty at Memphis, Tenn. & has never been fit for service since.”9 During their stay at Eastport until May 11, Spalding’s 12th Tennessee scouted into Alabama and Mississippi. It scouted three times to Iuka, Mississippi, and once to Florence, Alabama, and skirmished several times with guerrillas. Unfortunately a few men of the 10th and 12th Tennessee deserted and became guerrillas themselves. A few even joined enemy deserters to form bands of outlaws. Reporting on February 8 from Fayetteville in Lincoln County, Brig. Gen. Richard W. Johnson wrote that his troopers had “killed 18 guerrillas and captured 12 . . . , not counting a number of men belonging to the 10th and 12th Tennessee Cavalry Regiments (USA) who had deserted and become guerrillas of the worst type.”10 As early as May 1862, unionists in Lincoln County had tried to reorganize their government. Once the Union army reoccupied the county in summer 1863, with Colonel Brownlow’s support they tried to suppress “a considerable body of Guerillas.” By spring 1864 they had created a home guard and elected as their commander Capt. Joseph G. Barry, formerly of Company H, 6th Tennessee. The unionists had reportedly known Barry “since childhood” and believed him to be a “high tone gentleman and a true loyal citizen.” Perhaps unknown to them, the captain had been discharged from the 6th in September 1864 because of “an adverse report” from a military board. But he did not receive his final pay at that time because of some money he owed the army “Pay Department,” for which he had been briefly under arrest in July.11 Before the men of the 1st Tennessee left for Nashville, Chaplain Holtsinger, on their behalf, presented General Croxton with “a handsome sword, properly engraved.” He spoke of Croxton’s “fame as a warrior” and of the Tennesseans’ pride in having served with him. The Kentucky general responded by referring to their common bond as southern unionists and praised them for their “unhesitating obedience and unmurmuring endurance.” At Nashville when Lee surrendered on April 9 at Appomattox, the 1st Tennessee heard “bands . . . playing, soldiers cheering, and artillery booming.” Speaking of his comrades, one trooper wrote: “Men who were never known to smile now laughed; those 9. Carter, First Regiment, 267; TICW, 1:324, 329, 333, 351; RAGT, 443; 6th Tennessee, CSR; Wiley, Billy Yank, 124, 136–37. 10. RAGT, 603–4; TICW, 1:346; ORS, 65:610. 11. Curran Pope to Johnson, Apr. 30, [1862], PAJ, 5:354–55; David A. Briggs and James P. Brownlow to Johnson, Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Joseph G. Berry, 6th Tennessee, CSR.

364

East Tennessee and Beyond

who were always quiet in camp were heard to shout; and those who were never known to take a drink of commissary whiskey actually got drunk.” Only a week later, at home in East Tennessee, they were “greeted with outstretched arms, and banquets were given in their honor.”12 On February 3, along with the rest of Knipe’s Seventh Division, the 2nd and 4th Tennessee received orders to report to New Orleans, where General Canby collected troops for an attack on Mobile. At the Crescent City Knipe’s men “camped on the old battlefield where Jackson fought the British” in 1815. Since Canby had more cavalrymen than horses, one Tennessee regiment had to be dismounted and left behind. That lot fell on March 18 to the 2nd Tennessee, an undistinguished regiment of eight hundred troopers with the shadow of Okolona still hanging over it.13 There was time for men of both regiments to visit some of the sites, including Jackson Square and its statue of “Old Hickory” mounted “with his saber, sash . . . , and plumed hat.” Not unlike others visiting the French Quarter, on one occasion “the boys [decided] . . . to get something to drink.”14 After being ordered to Vicksburg in late March, the 2nd Tennessee found the city “battered and gloomy,” though with pleasant weather, a few horses to ride, and “talk about peace.” Only two weeks later they had a “one hundred gun salute” following news of Richmond’s surrender, then another two days later because of Lee’s surrender. The victory celebration at the county courthouse overlooking the city drew ten thousand people, including the Union soldiers formed by regiments. The crowd heard the army bands and “stirring speeches . . . by a number of prominent army officers.”15 Still the sober tragedies of war continued. From one extended family named Trotter serving in Company M, three members died before the company left New Orleans and two others would die before it left Vicksburg. On April 15 news of Lincoln’s assassination reached Vicksburg, casting “a pall of gloom . . . over the entire encampment.” On April 18, an official day of mourning, cavalrymen wore “a badge of sorrow” and draped their sabers and their horses’ heads in crepe.16 Meanwhile Canby executed his plan for his 32,800 soldiers from New Or12. Carter, First Regiment, 255–56, 267. 13. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 223–24; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 49. 14. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 224. 15. Ibid., 225–26. 16. Ibid., 225–26, 353.

Final Months

365

leans and those of Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele’s 13,000 from Pensacola to capture Mobile, defended by 10,000 Rebels in the city and at two forts. Canby attacked Spanish Fort across the bay from Mobile, while Steele attacked Fort Blakely to the north. After laying siege to Spanish Fort on March 27, Canby captured it on April 8. Then the combined Federal forces overwhelmed Fort Blakely (surrounded by Steele since April 1) on April 9.17 The 4th Tennessee had embarked for Mobile from Lakeport on Lake Pontchartrain from March 19 to 21 aboard at least three different steamers. The men sailed for Fort Morgan, occupied earlier, at the entrance to Mobile Bay. All went well except for Company L onboard the steamer Warrior, which mistakenly landed the unit at Fort Barrancas, Florida, on March 23. The company rejoined the regiment’s other 450 men almost a week later by way of another steamer.18 On March 23 most of Lieutenant Colonel Thornburgh’s 4th Tennessee rode from Fort Morgan along the peninsula to Canby’s new headquarters at Fish River on the east side of Mobile Bay. Two days later William L. Cate’s Company A escorted a telegraph train from the fort to the river. On March 29 the 4th Tennessee was part of the advance in the march north toward Spanish Fort. In the words of Capt. Thomas H. Easley of Company B, the regiment marched “in front of the Sixteenth Army Corps, finding . . . the enemy and steadily pressing him . . . back in conjunction with the infantry.”19 Once Canby laid siege to Spanish Fort and Steele to Fort Blakely, the 4th Tennessee found itself doing what cavalry so often did: “picketing, scouting, patrolling and other sundry duties.” On one occasion, wrote Pvt. James Goodwin, the regiment “fought a squad of rebels.” After “emptying their pistols,” the Tennesseans repulsed them “with their sabers.” After Canby curtained Spanish Fort with ninety artillery guns and opened fire during the late afternoon of April 8, his infantry overran the fort in six hours. The next day about the same time, the combined forces of Canby and Steele captured Fort Blakely in about twenty minutes, though again, as at Spanish Fort, with hundreds of losses on both sides.20 After the remaining 4,500 enemy troops evacuated Mobile on April 11, bluecoats began entering the city the next day, some by steamer and others 17. B&L, 4:411. 18. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 49; TICW, 1:329; ORS, 65:472, 476, 478, 495. 19. ORS, 65:472, 476. 20. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 50; ORS, 65:476.

366

East Tennessee and Beyond

by marching north around the bay. The 4th helped escort 2,500 prisoners to Mobile. The regiment later left the city in detachments during the next three weeks: the first traveling twelve miles toward Citronelle on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, the second marching another forty miles up the Tombigbee River, and the third escorting officers negotiating the surrender of Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor to General Canby on May 4 at Citronelle.21 From May 8 to 22, Maj. Gen. Joseph Bailey’s Second Brigade, including the 4th Tennessee, participated in an expedition to Baton Rouge. There the men of the 4th heard a nasty rumor about their going to Texas. But they soon realized that was not to be the case when they received orders to turn over their arms, saddles, and horses. The regiment returned to Nashville in mid-June and was mustered out in July.22 Following the Nashville Campaign, Maj. Ben Cunningham’s three dismounted companies of the 3rd Tennessee returned to Edgefield, hoping to be remounted. But in the spring the men were at Pulaski, still dismounted. Since late September 1864, other members of the regiment had been in Cahaba Prison near Selma. Initially in 1864, Confederates filled the partially covered two-hundred-foot-long by one-hundred-foot-wide cotton shed (sporting a “mud[ded] floor”) with bunk beds for five hundred men. But by spring 1865, almost two thousand more prisoners occupied the surrounding stockade. Each man cooked his own food, mostly cornpone. They had plenty of water from the nearby Alabama River, though often polluted.23 As at Andersonville, a gang of thugs bullied victims into relinquishing anything they could use, trade, or offer as a bribe. One man, Pvt. Richard Pierce, seven feet tall and whom the men called “Big Tennessee,” broke the gang’s power. Although he belonged to Company D, 3rd Tennessee, the twenty-twoyear-old sandy-headed man with long arms was actually a Kentucky farmer from Barbourville. He had signed his enlistment by making his X mark on September 1, 1862. Pierce had served mostly as a wagoner, and once before he was imprisoned at Richmond for about two months during spring 1863.24 When the muggers robbed a friend, Pierce, the barrel-chested giant of a man, became his champion. Big Tennessee had his comrade openly accuse the 21. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 231n; Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 51, 52; ORS, 65:486. 22. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 53–56; TICW, 1:329. 23. TICW, 1:326; Denney, Civil War Prisons, 101–2, 169, 170. 24. William O. Bryant, Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster (Tuscaloosa, 1990), 90–92.

Final Months

367

assailants while he pretended to be an observer. Four of the muggers swore to whip the victim if he did not keep his mouth shut. Then sensing the big man was siding with the accuser, they threatened him, surrounded him, and struck him. Barely shaken by the blows of two men, Big Tennessee—in a Homeric scene—hit one with the chop of his left hand and another with his right fist, downing both. Then with his huge hands he grabbed the other two by their heads and slammed them together, throwing them unconscious to the ground. After this, as others were victimized they received his assistance. Pierce’s presence alone settled the situation, and the muggings abruptly ended.25 At one point the prisoners of Cahaba “disarmed the guard,” but Confederates surrounded “the prison with artillery,” thereby preventing a big breakout. During March 1865, when the river rose and water two to three feet deep ran into the prison, “guards gave them cordwood to make pens so [they] could scafel on them [for] over a week.” After that, and five hundred deaths over the life of the prison, guards finally took the prisoners out of the stockade. According to Sgt. Benjamin F. Wade of the 102nd Ohio Infantry, “The Alabama river rose so high that the Rebs were obligated to move us or have us all drowned.” Altogether during their nearly six months of captivity at Cahaba, the men of the 3rd Tennessee lost twenty-two men, mostly to diarrhea, pneumonia, and typhus.26 Soon after the flooding, members of the 3rd Tennessee, along with other prisoners at Cahaba, traveled by rail to Jackson, Mississippi, then “footed it most of the way to Vicksburg” to be exchanged at nearby Camp Fisk. The system of prisoner exchanges existing until 1863 resumed in spring 1865 because of northern public demand. One of the exchange sites was Camp Fisk, which processed prisoners mostly from Cahaba and Andersonville.27 After spending a few days at Vicksburg and receiving some assistance from the men of the 2nd Tennessee, the Volunteer State’s prisoners from Cahaba on April 24 boarded the wide-wheeler Sultana up from New Orleans. It already exceeded the 356 passengers it was licensed to transport. Worse still, it had to have one of its boilers patched before leaving with 2,500 passengers. The government paid the ship owners five dollars per enlisted man (the bulk 25. Ibid., 96–99. 26. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 153–54; Wade to mother, Mar. 17, 1865, Sgt. Benjamin F. Wade Papers, TSLA. 27. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 154; Denney, Civil War Prisons, 350; Noah Andre Trudeau, Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June 1865 (New York, 1995), 264.

368

East Tennessee and Beyond

of passengers) and ten dollars per officer. The Sultana departed at 9:00 p.m. Pvt. Charles M. Eldridge of Company G, 3rd Tennessee later recalled that the next day was “bright and beautiful and the air . . . a little chilly,” causing him to “lean . . . against the smokestack.” He found “the river . . . on one of its booms . . . spread[ing] all over the lowlands.”28 The Sultana reached Memphis at 6:30 p.m. on April 26. While it unloaded its cargo of sugar, some passengers walked around the Bluff City. Other prisoners received “tobacco and other necessary things” from a member of the Sanitary Commission. At 11:00 p.m. the vessel crossed the river to Hopefield, Arkansas, for fuel. It loaded a thousand bushels of coal into its hold, then “paddled out at about 1:00 a.m.” On that cool, rainy night, it moved upstream, bound for Cairo, Illinois. The river was at flood stage because of heavy ice and snow melting in the North.29 Eight miles out near Hen Island at midchannel, hundreds of yards from either bank, a boiler exploded at 2:00 a.m., slicing the Sultana, splintering timbers, setting fires, and spewing steam. Hundreds died in the initial explosion, and hundreds more drowned within minutes; within hours more than 1,500 passengers were lost. Some 174 members of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry died almost instantly, and others died later of their injuries. Although he shot upward with the explosion and “whirl[ed] over and over,” Eldridge miraculously survived. In the water he caught the first plank he could find. Floating downriver, he was later rescued and resuscitated by a farmer in a flatboat who had helped others as well.30 Because the stricken vessel had no lifeboats or other safety equipment, castaways searched for any debris they could find to keep them afloat. The steamer Bostona, a mile away from the scene, rushed to save some. Hundreds of others floated downstream toward Memphis, hoping to be recovered by the first steamboat coming their way. An ironclad gunboat, the Essex, came out from Memphis and rescued sixty men. Memphis hospitals were overwhelmed with the number of burn victims. Those who died in the hospitals or whose bodies were recovered were interred in a mass grave.31 28. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 374; Bryant, Cahaba Prison, 126–27; Trudeau, Out of the Storm, 265–69. 29. Bryant, Cahaba Prison, 128–29; Trudeau, Out of the Storm, 269–70; Cogley, Seventh Indiana, 189. 30. Trudeau, Out of the Storm, 270–75; Cogley, Seventh Indiana, 191–92; TCWVQ, 1:144. 31. Cogley, Seventh Indiana, 192.

Final Months

369

Sgt. James T. Wolverton of Company G, 6th Tennessee Cavalry, later wrote of his experience on the Sultana. Before the explosion the mechanic from Adamsville, Tennessee, was wide awake on the hurricane deck listening to a nearby leaky ice chest. Suddenly he “felt a terrible shock followed by a deafening explosion,” throwing him into the river as he “struggle[d] for breath.” Surfacing, he grasped for pieces of the boat for flotation. Now he could hear “the terrible screams of the victims.” Then he “went whirling down the river and soon landed in a drift with some others.” Looking north, they could see “the burning wreck of the steamer” and later to the south “the lights at Memphis.” Daylight was approaching before rescuers plucked Wolverton and his companions out of the water and into a small boat near Memphis.32 Unlike regiments that went into winter quarters at Gravelly Springs, the 5th Tennessee returned to its headquarters at Tullahoma on December 24, 1864, and stayed for more than a month. The regiment scouted for stragglers from Hood’s army and the ever-present guerrillas in nearby Lincoln County. Moving at a rather leisurely pace during frigid January 1865, the unionists captured fifteen of the enemy.33 On January 16 General Milroy at Tullahoma filed a negative report on the regiment. Since he arrived in June 1864, he had “tried every means known to [him] to bring about order and efficiency in the regiment”; he had failed. Its field officers appeared to “have no control over their subordinates [and] no conception of their obligations.” Because a large number “live[d] within one or two days’ ride” of Tullahoma, “they absent[ed] themselves without authority whenever they [took] the notion to visit their homes.” Although on paper the regiment numbered about eight hundred men, he believed that the greatest number that could be “paraded in camp at any time [would] not exceed 200.”34 Milroy recommended that Stokes take command of the regiment. From what he had been informed, “Colonel Stokes was able to keep the men together, and . . . hold them under reasonable discipline.” The general also suggested “that it be sent beyond the State of Tennessee—beyond the reach of their homes.” He felt this to be the only “sure means of making them of service to the Government.” Finally he “request[ed] that the regiment be ordered away from [his] command.” Failing to get immediate support for his suggestions, 32. TCWVQ, 1:144–55. 33. TICW, 1:332; ORS, 65:500. 34. TICW, 1:332; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 53–54.

370

East Tennessee and Beyond

Milroy ordered the 5th Tennessee on January 27 to Fayetteville, twenty-eight miles to the southwest. There he left them for the remainder of the war. Altogether at Fayetteville, six officers commanded the regiment for one or more times. Reportedly the men enjoyed good health at the end of February and had “plenty of provisions and forage.” During that month they captured more than thirty of the enemy: some they “exchanged, others [they sent] to Nashville to take the oath,” and ten they executed for “being bushwhackers of the deepest dye.”35 On May 2 the officers took time to petition Gov. William G. Brownlow to revoke the commission of Col. Robert Galbraith. They accused him of resigning from his command “due to [a] disagreement, when most needed & deserted his men to return to private life.” That month the 5th Tennessee, with Capt. William O. Rickman commanding, went on an expedition to Huntsville, Alabama, to track down an accused guerrilla named Capt. L. G. Mead, a recruiter for the Confederate cavalry since 1862. Because Mead failed to surrender when the war ended in April, they “show[ed] him no quarter.”36 On May 11, more than a month after Lee’s surrender, Spalding’s 12th Tennessee was ordered to St. Louis to be remounted for a special assignment out of Fort Leavenworth under General Mitchell, now commander of the District of North Kansas. Traveling up the Missouri River, they reached Leavenworth by boat on June 7. Mitchell ordered the Tennessee cavalrymen to escort a party of surveyors to the North Fork of the Solomon River in north-central Kansas. The group reached its destination on July 10. Thereafter some members of the regiment continued to guard the surveyors while they established a camp. Other detachments scouted for Indians in northern Kansas and southern Nebraska as far as Colorado Territory. Finally on September 3, orders arrived for the Tennesseans to report to Fort Leavenworth to be discharged at Nashville, none too soon for soldiers who had joined the army to save the Union.37 While the 13th Tennessee fought in North Carolina and Virginia, Colonel Miller allowed the sometime guide, scout, and recruiter Daniel Ellis to lead a detachment of men (mostly) from Carter and Johnson counties into those areas to search for a “gang of rebel scoundrels.” The thirty-two men, accom35. TICW, 1:333; ORS, 65:501; Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 54. 36. Weatherbee, 5th Tennessee, 55; Headquarters of 5th Tennessee Cavalry to Brownlow, May 2, 1865, William G. Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; John Wortham to Brownlow, May 29, 1865, ibid.; Daniel, “Special Warfare in Middle Tennessee, 122. 37. RAGT, 604–5; ORS, 65:593–611.

Final Months

371

panied by Captain Ellis and Lt. Andrew Campbell, a brave man by reputation who shot and killed John Hunt Morgan, left on foot with “an abundant . . . of arms and ammunition” and four horses for transporting supplies. After more than two weeks of capturing and killing bushwhackers—often in that order—Ellis in early April guided General Tillson and Colonel Kirk into parts of western North Carolina. During the middle of the month, the captain renewed his guerrilla hunt into Sullivan County against Isaac, Henry, and Jacob Nave, characterized by Ellis as robbing unionist families of everything from “an infant’s clothing, up to a featherbed or a horse.” After finding and killing Isaac Nave, the squad returned to Greeneville, Tennessee, and their regiment in May.38 Also during Stoneman’s absence, Parson’s 9th Tennessee, which incorporated the small 11th Tennessee from Cumberland Gap in March 1865, hunted down guerrillas and outlaws in upper East Tennessee. When Stoneman returned, he ordered detachments from Parson’s regiment to the Clinch River area to “scour” it of guerrillas from the Holston River to the Cumberlands. He also ordered Parsons specifically to guard the courthouse at Rutledge. Of those disturbing the fragile peace, he commanded the colonel to show “no false mercy.” The guerrilla, he wrote, should “be killed like a mad dog.” Yet the general warned him not to interfere “with those who stay at home and mind their own business.” But on May 1 General Thomas, probably to hasten the peace process, ordered his commanders in the Army of the Cumberland to give guerrillas and bushwhackers who laid down their arms the same terms that Grant gave Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. All who rejected the offer, however, should be “regarded as outlaws . . . , pursued, and when captured, treated as outlaws.”39 On the evening of May 6, three hundred guerrilla surrendered near Edgefield and were paroled. Three days later Ellis Harper surrendered near Gallatin. Harper, “who knew every foot of his stronghold” in northern Sumner County, commanded thirty men. He had avoided capture for three years while personally killing about twenty men. A week later Duval McNairy, a guerrilla often operating southwest of Nashville, turned himself over to the Federals at Franklin. Neither Harper nor McNairy faced problems with his parole, but this was not the case with everyone. Capt. Lewis Kirk of Lawrence County, 38. Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 376–403; Speer, “One Moment of Glory,” 289. 39. TICW, 1:344, 348; Fisher, War at Every Door, 155–56.

372

East Tennessee and Beyond

like Champ Ferguson a convicted murderer before the war, supposedly was paroled in May 1865. He had reportedly spent much of his time since 1863 impressing “gray-headed Union men . . . into the rebel army.” Despite his parole, early that summer soldiers from Pulaski arrested him, forced him to face a military trial, and on July 26, 1865, executed him by firing squad.40 Three weeks after Lee’s surrender, Champ Ferguson and five of his followers, whose war continued, rode to a house in Jamestown, Tennessee, where Tinker Dave Beaty was visiting. As Beaty ate his supper, they ordered him to surrender his arms and mount his horse. With three of them on each side, Ferguson (to Beaty’s left) directed him to take them to the home of Pleas Taylor. As they rode slowly, Beaty, who knew the visit was a ploy, spurred his horse and “wheeled [him] like a flash.” Although having to turn to shoot as he galloped away, the guerrillas reacted quickly. Three balls hit him, “one in the back, one in the shoulder, and one in the hip.” But Beaty would survive to see his nemesis hanged. By now Ferguson had lost the notched stick on which he kept his count “of killings.” Either way, Beaty’s name would never be added to it.41 Although Ferguson had not surrendered earlier, according to his account, he offered to do so on May 23 after receiving a letter from Col. Joseph Blackburn through James Walker of White County, offering his command the same terms as others. They presented themselves to Blackburn, and he paroled all except Ferguson, telling him that he would need to get back with him after conferring with General Thomas. On May 26 Blackburn sent for the guerrilla, who was seized when he arrived and forwarded to the military prison at Nashville.42 The military court of six officers indicted Ferguson on two charges: being a guerrilla and being guilty of multiple murders of soldiers and civilians. His trial began on July 11, 1865. After a lengthy trial ending with a guilty verdict in late September, Stoneman, by then commander of the District of Middle Tennessee, ordered that Ferguson be executed by hanging within the prison walls. Although a huge crowd appeared outside the prison entrance on October 20 to witness Ferguson’s hanging, the guards issued only three hundred passes. 40. Jill L. Garrett, comp., Obituaries from Tennessee Newspapers (Greenville, S.C., 1980), 155, 204–5. 41. Sensing, Champ Ferguson, 76. 42. Ibid., 17.

Final Months

373

After this, as he had requested, his corpse was placed in a coffin and given to his wife to take home and bury in White County.43 One of the public spectacles happening in Nashville during Ferguson’s trial, which included several Confederates testifying on his behalf, involved a cane attack by Blackburn on one of the defense’s key witnesses, General Wheeler. The provost marshal promptly arrested the twenty-three-year-old colonel. Later officials released the Liberty resident when he wrote his own oath swearing that he would hereafter “in no way interfere with J. Wheeler, late Maj. Gen. of the Army of the so-called Confederate States of America.” Moreover he would “conduct [himself] in an orderly and becoming manner” and obey regulations concerning “persons paroled . . . under the protection of the U.S. Government.”44 43. Ibid., 29, 53, 243–45, 248–51; Nashville Republican, Oct. 21, 1865; Barefoot, Let Us Die Like Brave Men, 263–64. 44. Oath, Aug. 8, 1865, Joseph H. Blackburn, 4th Tennessee Mounted Infantry, CSR; Nashville Press and Times, Aug. 27, 1865; Hale, DeKalb County, 194–95.

CONCLUSION

T

he location of a Tory cavalryman’s residence determined to a large degree why he joined the Union army. He was far more likely to become a Union trooper if he hailed from one of four predominantly white sections of the state: East Tennessee, the Cumberland counties of Middle Tennessee, the Tennessee River counties of the western half of the state, and the northern counties of West Tennessee bordering Kentucky. Few homegrown Yankees hailed from heavily black, slaveholding, plantation counties. Individuals dwelling on isolated subsistence farms or in remote villages away from major transportation lines, especially railroads, were more likely to volunteer for the Union cavalry than those residing in the cities and towns or along a primary route of travel. Far fewer refugees left the western two-thirds of the state than departed from East Tennessee during 1861 and winter 1862, and those who did mostly joined Kentucky, Illinois, or Indiana regiments. Enlistees in occupied Tennessee from spring 1862 to fall 1863 had failed to volunteer for Confederate service in 1861 and resisted the conscription instituted that fall. Once the Yankee army moved into parts of their section and into northern Alabama, Tories fled to nearby Union garrisons and outposts to enlist. Others who fought for the Rebels became disillusioned, especially after the occupation of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, and deserted to the Federals in order to make a living. Location often facilitated entrance into the Union army. For example, a person was more likely to join Union forces if residing near Kentucky or along the Tennessee River flowing out of that state or near an occupied part of Tennessee. Such also became the case with Tories out of North Carolina and Georgia following the occupation of Tennessee in fall 1863. Residing for an extended period between two rival armies—such as during 1863 in parts of Middle and West Tennessee—motivated men, especially anti-Confederates

Conclusion

375

and Rebel deserters, to enlist with the Federals because it became difficult to make a living by farming when both sides foraged off your land. A clue as to why individuals volunteered for the Union army can be found in the time of their enlistment. Although early volunteers shared with other unionists several common elements—such as opposition to secession, the Confederacy, and the war—significant events usually triggered their ultimate decision to enlist. In East Tennessee the first wave of enlistments occurred shortly after the reelection of Gov. Isham Harris in August 1861, when a few hundred refugees out of East Tennessee crossed the mountains into Union-leaning Kentucky. A second wave followed the Confederates’ suppression of the bridge burners and their supporters in November 1861. A third wave flowed from the enforcement of conscription during spring 1862, while a fourth followed the occupation of East Tennessee in fall 1863 and lasted into 1865. Union occupation of East Tennessee encouraged the enlistment of antiConfederates from the bordering counties of North Carolina and northern Georgia. It also made possible the recruitment of short-term mounted infantry among those unwilling to make a long-term commitment for fear of distance service. Of those East Tennesseans and others from bordering areas who joined the Union army during fall 1863 and spring 1864, probably as many as a fifth once served in the Confederate army (many unwillingly) before deserting. Almost another fifth likely were younger than eighteen years of age. During the earliest occupation, local and area leadership became an important factor in recruiting troopers, especially individuals having some prior political influence. Men enlisted, at least partly, because they would be led by one of their own; it is unlikely they would have joined in the same numbers if that had not been the case. Local opinionmakers such as Fielding Hurst and Stanford Warren of Purdy, Asa Hays of Henderson County, William H. Bradford of Troy, and Robert Galbraith and James Wortham of Shelbyville contributed greatly to the recruitment of Union troopers, as did regional figures such as Isaac Hawkins and William Stokes and East Tennessee politicians appointed by Gov. Andrew Johnson. Doubtless these men and their officerrecruiters used every network available to them such as kinship, past politicalparty affiliation, and lodge and denominational identity in organizing Federal units. East Tennessee’s first four regiments of Union cavalry—formed of refugees in Kentucky—saw little military action during 1862, and by February 1863 all had arrived in Middle Tennessee. Only one regiment of cavalry had been

376

Conclusion

raised by Governor Johnson in Middle Tennessee, Colonel Stokes’s 5th, its men having served primarily as scouts and guides. Except for Robert Johnson’s 1st and Richard Edwards’s 4th, still in Kentucky, these regiments served without distinction at the Battle of Stones River, and the men of one, Daniel Ray’s 2nd, twice fled from the enemy. Unionists in West Tennessee from the Tennessee River counties led by a few politicians with the support of General Dodge— then engaged in rebuilding the section’s railroads—raised two cavalry regiments, the 6th and 7th Tennessee, during 1862 along with the 7th Tennessee Infantry that merged into the 6th Tennessee Cavalry in early 1863. General Forrest’s raid in December again destroyed that section’s north–south railroads and also captured Hawkins’s 7th and forced Hurst’s 6th to spend much of its service thereafter guarding the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. During the first half of 1863, only two of the five Tory cavalry regiments in Middle Tennessee, Brownlow’s 1st and Stokes’s 5th, found themselves heavily engaged in skirmishing as the two armies awaited the next major battle. For the others life consisted mostly of drilling and more drilling except for providing courier service and an occasional pursuit of guerrillas or a rare skirmish against Rebel regulars. Brownlow’s “Fighting First” received on-the-job training as it engaged in firefights south and west of Murfreesboro along opposing fronts. Stokes’s 5th, which knew the routes and hills east of Murfreesboro, provided guides and scouts as well as spies for Rosecrans as his infantry pushed out to forage and impress horses and mules toward the Cumberland. In the process Union troops guided by the 5th defeated the John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry in a number of engagements, damaging his reputation. During the Tullahoma Campaign, Union cavalry that included Tennessee Tories defeated Wheeler at Shelbyville. But as Rosecrans’s advance slowed, the homegrown Yankees devoted much of their time to hunting guerrillas and impressing horses and blacks. Once the army found shelter in Chattanooga after the Chickamauga defeat, the Tennesseans joined in chasing Wheeler off the railroads south of Nashville that supplied the Army of the Cumberland. Meanwhile Burnside invaded East Tennessee, where along with his other contributions, he helped raise new regiments of state Union cavalry. But the sole Tory unit to prove its ability in that campaign was one sent from Middle Tennessee, Brownlow’s 1st, which demonstrated its effectiveness at such engagements as Dandridge, Mossy Creek, and Fair Garden. Meanwhile during fall 1863, two new cavalry regiments formed at Nashville, George Bridges’s 10th and George Spalding’s 12th, composed of northerners and Tories.

Conclusion

377

After an initial misstep at Calfkiller River in February 1864, Stokes’s 5th, united for the first time in months, started the slow process of driving guerrillas out of the Cumberlands. When the 5th left the Cumberlands that spring to guard various posts along the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, its antiguerrilla role was taken by new mounted infantry regiments organized in the area along with home guards. The experience, resourcefulness, and boldness of Tory mounted-infantry leaders such as Abraham Garrett and Joseph Blackburn, who took the fight to the guerrillas, greatly diminished the influence of irregulars in the Cumberlands. During early 1864 Forrest exposed almost every weakness possessed by Union cavalry in West Tennessee, especially those of the homegrown Yankees. Tories were snared in a web of circumstances created by Sooy Smith and others at Okolona that damaged what little reputation the 2nd Tennessee had, unfairly hurt the record of the 3rd, but improved that of the 4th. As Forrest moved toward Kentucky in late March, one of his commanders—in a sideshow away from the main column—outfoxed Hawkins into surrendering his 7th Tennessee at Union City. In April Forrest attacked Fort Pillow and slaughtered William Bradford’s new battalion along with numerous black soldiers under Colonel Booth. Union City and Fort Pillow proved as much about the inadequacy of lightly defended posts in the no-man’s land of West Tennessee as it did about the quality of the section’s homegrown Yankees. During the Atlanta Campaign, Tennessee’s Union cavalry mostly defended Sherman’s lines of communication in Tennessee. Brownlow’s 1st boosted its reputation at Cassville, Acworth, and at the crossing of the Chattahoochee, while Stephens’s 4th served commendably in Rousseau’s raid. Sadly both experienced the disaster of McCook’s ill-fated raid south of Atlanta. Both regiments later recovered enough to help others defend Middle Tennessee’s railroads from Wheeler in September 1864 and thereby diminish his cavalry as a force in the Confederate army. Later these same homegrown Yankees found themselves facing Forrest in the early fall with mixed results that finally drove him out of Tennessee, though not before the Rebel chieftain captured an additional Tennessee Union cavalry regiment, the 3rd, at Sulphur Branch trestle. General Wilson’s appointment a few weeks later as Sherman’s chief of cavalry spelled the doom of Governor Johnson’s desire to operate the state’s loyal cavalry as an independent division. But this paved the way for Tory regiments to operate within a unified cavalry corps with adequate resources against a major enemy army commanded by General Hood. The state’s blue horsemen

378

Conclusion

opposed Hood’s advance toward the capital, fought gallantly in the Battle of Nashville, and engaged in the pursuit of the beaten Rebels into Alabama and afterward into Mississippi. Two Yankee cavalry commanders of Tennessee regiments, Spalding and William Prosser, stood out during the pursuit. Meanwhile in East Tennessee during fall 1864, Colonel Miller’s brigade accompanied by General Gillem performed its best at Greeneville, where John Hunt Morgan met his death, and its worst in the Bulls Gap stampede. To a considerable degree it redeemed itself in December during the Saltville raid into Virginia, a joint Tennessee-Kentucky Tory operation led by General Stoneman. During Stoneman’s last raid that occurred the following spring in North Carolina and Virginia, vengeful blueclad troopers from Tennessee and Kentucky, along with Pennsylvania and Michigan Yankees, engaged in a wellexecuted operation that would have been of greater significance had the war lasted longer. After being in winter quarters in early 1865 at Gravelly Springs, Alabama, other homegrown Yankees spread out in several directions following each new division’s assignment. The 1st Tennessee initially moved to Nashville and then to Knoxville to be discharged. The 2nd and 4th Tennessee went to New Orleans, from where the 4th went on to fight at Mobile, and the 2nd returned to Vicksburg. Other regiments fought guerrillas and herded government cattle in Middle Tennessee. After their release from Andersonville, a veritable hell on earth, most of the 3rd’s surviving members drowned in the Sultana disaster. Spalding’s 12th Tennessee in May went west to Nebraska, where it remained until September. Conflicts within and between regiments represented a significant weakness of Tennessee’s Union cavalry. Initially disputes arose among officers over the raising of troops and competition for recruits, especially by those striving to reach company, battalion, and regimental levels. Soon some younger officers began to accuse their immediate commanders of ineptitude, incompetence, and inexperience. To eradicate these drawbacks, brigade commanders and others brought in regular U.S. army men or northerners with two to three years of military experience. This in turn precipitated additional resentment since Tory officers feared that they were being replaced and their troopers preferred men from their own state. To many of the young Tory horsemen, getting drunk was their way of having fun. Usually the men in the ranks could maintain a habit of occasional drunkenness, and only a handful were discharged for imbibing, but several

Conclusion

379

commanders left the service for doing the same. Governor Johnson’s son Robert succumbed to alcoholism in spring 1863, left the 1st Tennessee, took on an ambitious (and unsuccessful) assignment to raise a brigade, and finally became his father’s secretary. Former sutler William R. Cook of the 2nd Tennessee was accused of furnishing whisky to his men and dismissed briefly before being restored to duty. Jesse H. Strickland of the 8th Tennessee had his commission withdrawn in October 1863 for having been found drunk with some of his troopers. And in November 1864 Colonel Bridges was arrested and later discharged for failing to report with his 10th Tennessee south of Nashville because of drunkenness. Tennessee Tories suffered from a reputation for plundering civilian property. The practice arose from multiple motives and circumstances. Some pillaging began legitimately enough as part of foraging for food and fodder but ended in wanton destruction and blatant thievery. Plundering usually included an element of revenge, often for recent opposition to the loyal horsemen or some aid given to the enemy. Occasionally pillaging sprang from a longtime buildup of hatred or a class resentment. At other times it derived from a military order to punish civilians for collaborating with the enemy. In the final stages of the war, this more frequently involved official military policy to destroy whatever might be found useful to the enemy or the desire by troopers to steal what they coveted. On numerous occasions homegrown Yankees indulged in plundering after they had become intoxicated after discovering a cache of whiskey. Some plundering represented a disintegration of discipline as regimental officers failed to enforce good order, especially near towns occupied by their units. Some of the worst examples of a lack of discipline occurred by Hurst’s 6th at Jackson and Grand Junction, by detachments of Stokes’s 5th at Shelbyville and Tullahoma, and by Miller’s 13th at Gallatin and in North Carolina. Much depended on nonenforcement of the rules by officers lacking a sense of proper duty or unwilling to punish men who had largely placed them in their rank. Lack of discipline often led to lax attitudes among the Tennesseans toward leaving one’s post. Milroy wrote that the 5th’s “officers and men absent themselves without authority whenever they take a notion to visit their homes.” As long as the troopers were present for the monthly report, many from several regiments probably were never reported as absent without leave. Still, only a small percent of deserters left and then returned voluntarily or other-

380

Conclusion

wise; most never rejoined their unit. Desertion represented a major problem for homegrown Yankees. Altogether almost two thousand men deserted from the state’s Union cavalry (including the mounted infantry), a high number yet similar in percentage to desertion among the state’s Confederate soldiers. Union raids that included homegrown Yankees met with mixed results, according to the success or failure of the overall operation. During spring 1863 detachments of Stokes’s 5th served admirably against John Hunt Morgan east of Murfreesboro, as they did with others in Streight’s raid and in the attack on Shelbyville. The Tories assisted in destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars of food and supplies for the enemy’s army on Sooy Smith’s raid. Rousseau’s raiders, including Stephens’s 4th, destroyed Rebel ordnance, quartermaster, and commissary stores as well as a western link in Atlanta’s railroad network. McCook’s raid south of Atlanta did much the same despite the catastrophic outcome for the troopers involved. And the highly successful raids of Stoneman, first on Saltville and then into North Carolina and Virginia, assisted in further disrupting and depleting an already staggering Confederacy. In other battles and campaigns in the West, Tennessee’s unionist horsemen also served with satisfaction and occasionally with distinction, as with Brownlow’s 1st in East Tennessee and in the Atlanta Campaign. Such was not always the case, as with the 2nd Tennessee at Stones River and at Okolona. Spalding’s 12th did distinguish itself during the Nashville Campaign and afterward, along with Prosser and the 2nd Tennessee, pursued Forrest as far as Mississippi. But Tennessee Tories spent much of their time during the war guarding the railroads into and out of Nashville and the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, necessary assignments that brought little glory to those detachments who offered easy prey to the enemy. Along with railroads the horsemen often guarded ordnance, quartermaster, and commissary depots, a tempting target for undersupplied Confederates. Ultimately these men operated as part of a system of railroads, depots, forts, and guardhouses; vast warehouses; and railroad repair centers in Nashville and Chattanooga that helped the Union supply Sherman’s army and win the war in the West. Homegrown Yankees protected their own lives and interests by fighting guerrillas in Middle Tennessee, especially in the Cumberlands, where initially Stokes’s 5th and later Garrett’s 1st Mounted and Blackburn’s 4th Mounted served. Several Tennessee Union mounted regiments fought guerrillas during the army’s movement toward Chattanooga during mid-1863 and thereafter

Conclusion

381

until mid-1865. After the 7th Tennessee Mounted Infantry was roundly beaten by a Rebel combination of regulars and irregulars at Athens, Tennessee, in January 1865, the 5th and 6th Tennessee Mounted Infantry took their fight against guerrillas into Georgia during spring 1865. Confederate guerrillas appear to have been a less important force in West Tennessee, where even Forrest opposed such partisan operations. Tennessee Federals often found protecting their own difficult because of the Union’s military policy of concentrating on only a few large garrisons, such as at Nashville, Murfreesboro, Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, along with guarding the railroads. Yet when given the opportunity, the unionist cavalry and mounted infantry tried to guard their native regions by operating from such towns as Shelbyville and Carthage in Middle Tennessee, Purdy and Union City in West Tennessee, and the small communities of upper East Tennessee after Gillem reported to Knoxville in August 1864. Guarding the home front was almost entirely the focus of the eight mounted-infantry regiments. During 1864 and 1865 these units assumed the added responsibility of watching the polls, guarding the courts, and enforcing the decisions of local provost marshals as well as those of the state’s unionist government. To the homegrown Yankees of Tennessee, local protection undergirded the purpose of the war: an opportunity to live out their lives within the Union forged by their forefathers. They believed this impossible under what they perceived to be the slavocracy of the Confederacy, a government that persecuted their leaders and conscripted them and their sons to travel hundreds of miles from their homes to wage war against the only nation under which they had ever lived. Once the conflict had lasted for two years or so, some shifts occurred. Some original unionists who had fought for the Confederacy either willingly or involuntarily, as well as some disillusioned Rebels who wanted to be on the winning side, joined the Tories. These new unionist recruits came over for numerous reasons, including their personal livelihood and survival as well as those of their families. Still the overall thrust of Tennessee’s loyal civilian leadership and its military leaders remained identical: they and other unionists could find security and prosperity only within the Old Union. The war failed to produce a typical homegrown Yankee cavalry regiment. As the war unfolded, different types of recruits entered the commands. The first seven regiments formed during 1862 and early 1863 overwhelmingly consisted of unconditional unionists. The other seven—plus eight short-term mounted infantry regiments—recruited after spring 1863 were composed of

382

Conclusion

youths coming of military age during the war, some northerners, a few unionists serving earlier elsewhere, and a significant number of deserters once fighting for the Confederacy. Of the fourteen regiments, three never amounted to much and met tragic ends, all at the hands of Forrest: Hawkins’s 7th at Union City, Bradford’s 14th at Fort Pillow, and Pickens’s 3rd at Sulphur Branch trestle. The 3rd experienced a shining moment during a cavalry charge at Ivy Hill farm and at the trestle, where it fought bravely before enduring imprisonment and then the death of most of its surviving men in the Sultana disaster. What little reputation Ray and Cook’s 2nd had during its combined 5,557 miles of marching throughout the war—most of which it lost at Stones River and Okolona—it partly regained by raiding Hood’s supply trains during the general’s winter flight across the Tennessee River after Nashville. Other regiments achieved varying degrees of success and failure. The best record belonged to Brownlow’s 1st. Its 1,493 officers and men fought in twentynine battles and engagements—including the Tullahoma, East Tennessee, Atlanta, and Nashville campaigns—and numerous skirmishes. It benefited during its early days from Governor Johnson’s special considerations and being brigaded with northern regiments, thereby receiving better support. As with the other regiments, the 1st lost more men to death by sickness than to battle wounds. But it did endure many men wounded, primarily as a result of its fierce-fighting troopers. Many members also were forced to surrender to the enemy, about half during McCook’s raid below Atlanta. The remaining nine regiments can be divided into two groups. Four of them (8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th) did little of consequence other than as members of certain brigades. The other group (4th, 5th, 6th, 12th, and 13th) made records for good or evil or both. Stephens’s 4th distinguished itself on three raids: Sooy Smith’s into Mississippi, Rousseau’s through Alabama, and McCook’s below Atlanta. Spalding’s 12th fought bravely and aggressively during the Nashville Campaign. Miller’s 13th, which included many fuzzy-faced youths, North Carolinians, conscript evaders, and deserters, saw only eighteen months of service. But during that time its men traveled more than 3,100 miles on horseback through six states and “crossed and recrossed the various ranges of the Allegheny mountains.” Under Gillem’s command they gained national attention by killing John Hunt Morgan. Under Stoneman’s command the 13th’s troopers destroyed more Confederate property than any other Tennessee Tory regiment, including a railroad, lead mine, and the saltworks in southwestern Virginia; several de-

Conclusion

383

pots in Virginia and North Carolina; and the Salisbury Prison. Because of this—and their plunder and thievery—these Tennessee unionists came to be hated in four states. Had the war lasted longer, the damage they did would have been even more telling on the Confederacy. Tennessee Confederates considered Stokes’s 5th and Hurst’s 6th the most infamous Tory regiments. Both units spent much of their time in their own area’s backyard, the former in the Cumberlands and the latter in southeastern West Tennessee. In addition to guarding army posts, their men provided intelligence as scouts and served as guides, with some success at both tasks. Beyond these duties but often in connection with them, the men engaged in a war with enemy recruiters, guerrilla bands, and those noncombatants aiding the Rebels. In “various actions” Hurst’s 6th claimed to have captured nineteen hundred prisoners. As the situation demanded, several Union generals praised or condemned Stokes’s 5th. Both regiments at times foraged illegally, pillaged, and plundered. Some of their behavior returned in kind to their enemy, while some resulted from army policy, such as acceptable acts spelled out in General Order No. 100 of April 1863—though the Tennesseans unlikely read it. Many strategies and policies formed the backdrop against which the Tories played out their role. But four closely related themes dominated their service: guarding the railroads, the conducting or repelling cavalry raids, fighting guerrilla bands, and enforcing the Union’s pacification plans. During 1862–63 the Tories operated extensively as scouts, guides, escorts, and spies for the slow-moving Union army. This was especially the case with Hurst’s 6th in West Tennessee, Stokes’s 5th in Middle Tennessee, and Brownlow’s 1st in East Tennessee. Again and again Hurst’s and Stokes’s scouts provided the best information on the lay of the land and the strength of the enemy’s army. Often Brownlow’s 1st took the advance, leading other Federals into unknown territory. Historian Edwin C. Fishel has asked the question: “Of all types of intelligence which would the successful commanders have been least willing to do without?” He claims that “[t]here can be only one answer— cavalry reconnaissance.” To a dramatic degree this was the case, for only cavalry over a brief period of time “could locate enemy positions” and ascertain enemy strength “that hills and trees concealed from stationary observers.” The Tories provided this reconnaissance for Federal commanders as well as anyone in the state.1 1. Edwin C. Fishel, “The Mythology of Civil War Intelligence,” in Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, ed. John T. Hubbell (Westport, Conn., 1975), 104–5.

384

Conclusion

Union forces in Tennessee after mid-1863 fought the war over the railroad, their line of communication. Any map depicting the war in the state without showing the main railroad lines loses much of its strategic meaning. It was along the rail lines that Union posts, depots, and blockhouses existed. Even as Sherman’s main army moved south, the railroad had to be defended and maintained by a force at least a third as large as the army in Georgia. In this consideration alone the Union needed a decided advantage in manpower. It gained that advantage through the use of immigrants, unionist and black soldiers, contraband laborers, and short-term enlistees from the North during Sherman’s 1864 march through Georgia. The army also protected its line of communication through the construction of a system of more than one hundred blockhouses protecting the rail lines moving south out of Nashville and twenty-three in progress west toward Johnsonville on the Tennessee River. In addition redoubts and stockades also served as strong defensive points along the forty-four miles of the Louisville & Nashville northeast to the Kentucky line. The blockhouses—several of which also defended towns—most often stood near railroad bridges, existed as part of a larger outpost, and provided shelter for twenty to thirty men. Tennessee Tory detachments served at several of these fortified garrisons and scouted in connection with many of the others. Much of this book describes individual cavalry raids and the massive raids of Sherman to Atlanta and Hood toward Nashville. The earlier Confederate cavalry raids by the regulars of Morgan, Forrest, and Wheeler; the partisan rangers of others; and by the more localized guerrilla bands were of great concern for Union operations. In reaction to their damage to the army’s lines of communication, the Federals created a strengthened cavalry—better manned, better mounted, better trained, and better armed—with a greater sense of purpose than merely supporting the infantry. But even more massive enemy raids followed such as Forrest’s expeditions into West Tennessee and Wheeler’s and Forrest’s attacks on the railroads of Middle Tennessee in 1863 and 1864. All of these operations saw Tories fighting on the defensive, at times with embarrassing results. Union strategists as early as 1862 began to learn from the Rebel raiders and occasionally from their own failures (such as Streight’s spring 1863 raid into northern Alabama). Federal raids began to pay off more once they focused more on destroying the resources supporting the Confederate army. Sherman’s Meridian Campaign, in which Sooy Smith’s ill-fated Okolona expedition represented a secondary part, was especially significant. Some homegrown

Conclusion

385

Yankees participated in Sherman’s ultimate raid into Georgia and subsidiary raids to sever specific railroads. Others rode with Stoneman into Virginia and North Carolina to help strike at some of the exhausted Confederacy’s dwindling resources. Tennessee’s homegrown Yankees spent much of their time fighting nonmustered guerrillas, some of whom (as in the Cumberlands) often rode with the regulars as occasion or opportunity demanded. Counter-guerrilla activity weaves like a thread through this work. Guerrillas were forever present, a threat to communication lines until the building of strong blockhouses (because they lacked artillery) but still capable of controlling much of the countryside and cowing those individuals who otherwise would have given up on the Confederacy or gone over to the Yankees. Like much of the hill country of Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia, Tennessee offered a conducive environment for guerrillas, one possessing sympathizers and supporters, places to hide, regular military allies, targets to hit, and for a time enemy forces too weak to interfere. Irregular warfare arose in spring and summer 1862 because of the northern invasion of the state and the resultant disruption that separated many Tennesseans from their original regiments. The “full flower” of partisan and guerrilla bands existed from “mid-1862 until sometime in 1864,” when the movement “transition[ed] to anarchic turbulence” for the last year and a half of the war. From studying the situation in the Cumberlands, it appears that this change came during spring 1864, when some Confederate regulars recruiting in the area rejoined the main army in Georgia and the Federals, with the help of Tories, three-year regulars, and one-year mounted infantry, began to rid the region of guerrillas who already were losing the support and sympathy of the noncombatants they robbed and abused.2 The ultimate goal of the homegrown Yankees was the pacification of Tennessee. East Tennessee troops began their service as a quest to free their section from the Confederacy with the North’s help. By 1863 they had expanded their goal to liberate all of Tennessee. Beyond this, they and other Tories harbored no desire to leave their state. The wish to be close to home and protect it proved significant for both sides, and as the war lingered, it affected both recruitment and desertion. At the beginning of the occupation, and to a limited degree even later, the army and Governor Johnson sought to reconcile non2. Cooling, “People’s War,” in Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence, 118.

386

Conclusion

combatants by mild means such as political rallies, elections between candidates identified with restoration, and loyalty oaths as the price for suff rage, printing, trading, and practicing some professions. When these practices failed to reconcile the Rebels, Governor Johnson, and eventually the military, turned to harsher measures, including imprisonment, eviction, confiscation, the destruction of private property, and exile. Homegrown Yankees appeared more willing than most soldiers to execute a hard-war policy. Along with Sherman, they believed that such tough measures would help end the war sooner; moreover, in many cases such actions had the added benefits in some cases of assuaging personal revenge and in others of promoting political control over the state while punishing the Confederates. By 1865 pacification in Tennessee meant rooting out the guerrillas—in East Tennessee, the Cumberlands, the southern part of Middle Tennessee, and into Georgia—and establishing a loyal state government controlled by unionists. Governor Brownlow, as well as General Thomas, called upon the state’s homegrown Yankee Cavalry to assist in pacifying the countryside even after the war ended in April 1865. During that year the unionist troops guarded the polls and protected the reopening of the courts; rounded up the last of the guerrilla leaders, some of whom failed to surrender after Appomattox; engaged in the giving of loyalty oaths; and supported provost marshals and sheriffs in law enforcement. Some were discharged early to serve in local and state government positions as they transitioned from army life. In East Tennessee the unionists’ triumph would endure, but elsewhere their minority status later forced them to seek protection from the state and national government or to adjust to the new order under their former enemies.

EPILOGUE

Pride, Politics, and Pensions

T

he Union army mustered out all of its Volunteer State cavalry during summer 1865 except for the 12th Tennessee at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which did not muster out until in October. For the cavalry, the war wound down rather than abruptly ending. Mopping up rogue enemy forces had to be done, order restored, and guerrillas and outlaws (by now indistinguishable) pursued. Then records had to be compiled and an accounting made of weapons, equipment, and horses. Even some cavalrymen themselves had to be rounded up before being discharged. Capt. David Ellis of the 13th Tennessee received his last assignment on May 21 from General Gillem. According to orders, he was “to proceed forthwith to the counties of Carter, Johnson, Sullivan, and Washington, to arrest all absentees belonging to [his] command.”1 In June Governor Brownlow recommended to Secretary of War Stanton that the first four cavalry regiments, men mainly from East Tennessee, be discharged individually from the date of enlistment plus three years. Then he wanted the remaining troops with fewer than three years of service transferred to remedy “the distress in East Tennessee.” But Stanton denied this request, and the men were mustered out by regiments in June and early July at Nashville.2 The new state adjutant general, James P. Brownlow, whose father became governor on April 5, 1865, handled much of the final regimental reporting for the state. He had been employed by the adjutant general’s office for some months before fifty-eight members of the state house of representatives petitioned the governor to appoint him to the post. During 1865 and 1866 Brown1. TICW, 1:318:60; Ellis, Thrilling Adventures, 376–77, 430; Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 151. 2. Brownlow to E. M. Stanton, June 19, 1865, William G. Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA.

388

Epilogue

low completed the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Tennessee of the Military Forces of the State from 1861 to 1866. In December 1866 he received an appointment as captain in the regular army. But being assigned to California, he requested and received delays on reporting before finally resigning from the army in March 1868. A year later Brownlow became superintendent of the Knoxville & Kentucky Railroad, which eventually would reach from Louisville to Knoxville.3 While awaiting a discharge at Knoxville, men of Miller’s brigade (8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee) continued to have what Governor Brownlow called “a bad state of feeling between them and the colored troops.” This coincided with northern journalist Whitelaw Reid’s findings in postwar Knoxville: “Every man felt it his duty to help set back the upstart niggers.” Reacting to this, one sable soldier stabbed a trooper of the 9th, while another black guard fatally shot one of the 8th. The latter victim’s comrades in turn swore revenge against other blacks. Isolated racial incidents by cavalrymen spilled over into 1866. On February 13 farmer Calvin Dyer, former 1st Tennessee commander, attended a government surplus sale along with hundreds of others. As he entered a building to claim his purchase, he was fatally shot by a black guard, whose feeble defense was “that a white officer resembling Colonel Dyer . . . had offended him.” Despite attempts to protect him for trial, the assailant was seized by Dyer’s friends and summarily hanged in front of the Freedmen’s Bureau office.4 Approximately two-thirds of the Tennessee Union cavalry regiments received their final pay and discharges at Nashville, with the others receiving theirs either at Knoxville or Chattanooga. Those whose families resided in the eastern part of the state rode along the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad to the nearest station to their homes and walked the remainder of the way. William W. Lowry, along with his comrades of the 5th Tennessee Mounted Infantry, remembered being “paid off,” receiving “free transportation,” and feeling “happy for their service and victory.”5 Soldiers from other regions took more indirect travel. Those residing east of 3. RAGT, 303; William G. Brownlow to James P. Brownlow, Apr. 17, 1865, in Andrew Johnson Papers, LC; Petition from House of Representatives for the Appointment of Col. Jim Brownlow as Adjt. Gen’l of the State to Governor Brownlow, Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; 1st Tennessee, CSR. 4. Brownlow to Johnson, Aug. 31, 1865, PAJ, 7:686; Carter, First Regiment, 270; Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865–1866 (New York, 1866), 352; House, Very Violent Rebel, 183; Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator, Aug. 30, 1865, Feb. 14, 21, 1866. 5. TICW, 1:318–50; TCWVQ, 1:1–156.

Pride, Politics, and Pensions

389

Nashville took the train to Gallatin or a steamboat up the Cumberland River. From there they either walked or hired a horse or a wagon and rode southeast to their homes. One veteran wrote that he “came to Gallatin on train . . . , to Carthage on a hack, and home on horseback.” Those traveling to the river counties of West Tennessee went by boat to the closest landing and walked to their homes. Some walked for long distances by either choice or necessity. One veteran walked “3 hundred miles” from Nashville to Claiborne County, while another footed from Nashville to Bradford in northeastern West Tennessee, enjoying “all the good whiskey [he] wanted.”6 Of the more than 1,300 men who soldiered in the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, slightly more than 700 survivors (along with their post office addresses) are listed in its 1902 regimental history. About five of six veterans remained in Tennessee. Of those leaving, one-third settled in adjacent states of the Upper South, about half ventured beyond the Mississippi, and about one-sixth chose the Midwest. A list of the addresses of 428 survivors of the 13th Tennessee in 1903 shows that nine of ten still resided in their native state (either Tennessee or North Carolina). Of the one-tenth who departed, a majority settled beyond the Mississippi River. Neither of these regiments had more than a handful of veterans who later resided in the Deep South or the Northeast.7 Occupationally most mirrored Pvt. Joel A. Acuff, who “went to work on the farm again just as [he] had dun before the war.” Of the seventy-three former Union horse soldiers who filled out questionnaires for state veterans in the early 1900s, 90 percent at one time or another farmed for a living, and most had made their livelihood exclusively from agriculture. A few others combined farming with ministry or school teaching. Because of their pro-Union constituency, twenty-one of the seventy-three served at one time in county government. Immediately after the war several of them wielded influence over those who did serve in county government, especially in West Tennessee, where the number of qualified unionists was limited.8 Altogether twenty-one members of the 1865–67 legislature were from the state’s Union mounted regiments. They included three future congressmen: Roderick R. Butler, Abraham E. Garrett, and William J. Smith. In August 1865 6. TICW, 1:318–50; TCWVQ, 1:1–156. 7. Carter, First Regiment, 275–331; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 483–92. 8. TCWVQ, 1:1–156; Thomas A. Smith to Brownlow, July 3, 1865, Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; Fielding Hurst to Brownlow, June 27, 1865, encl. in Alexander Ramsey to Brownlow, June 27, 1865, ibid.

390

Epilogue

Stokes was elected to his old district and Isaac R. Hawkins in the Eighth District. Despite his troubled wartime record, Hawkins retained the respect of the people, and he and other members of his family served in several offices as Republicans. Later other comrades went to Congress, including John K. Miller of the 13th Tennessee and two northerners: William F. Prosser, elected from the district surrounding Nashville, and George Spalding, from a district in Michigan. Stokes lost a race for governor in 1869 while running as the candidate of the Radical wing of the Republican Party.9 Some sixty-nine members from Tennessee’s Union mounted troops served in the general assembly from 1865 to 1901, and a handful were elected as legislators in Alabama, Georgia, or North Carolina. Of these, almost all served as Republicans. After Reconstruction almost all of those elected came from predominately wartime unionist districts; occasionally they won in other districts when a split existed in Democratic ranks. A large majority of these former cavalrymen had held or would hold county and party offices. Some benefited from their war record to hold federal offices ranging from local postmaster to such plums as surveyor of customs at Memphis. After employment as editor of the Knoxville Whig and as a Treasury agent, both previously held by his father, John B. Brownlow served for twenty-five years as an official for the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C.10 Generally these veterans were like Dave Moss, a 13th Tennessee veteran who wrote of himself: “I am . . . a Republican. . . . I fought for my govmnt and I vote the way I shot.” Many attended the Southern Loyalists Convention meeting in September 1866 at Philadelphia. They organized the Republican Party locally, attended its conventions, published its newspapers, offered themselves as its candidates, and supported its nominees. Although the national party treated Tennesseans “like poor Country Cousins,” according to short-time cavalry captain John W. Thornburgh, every four years the state’s Republicans could hold “the balance of power between east and west” to name the party’s presidential nominee.11 9. BDTGA, vol. 2; BDAC. 10. BDTGA, vol. 2; TICW, 1:345; J. G. De Roulhac Hamilton, Reconstruction in North Carolina (New York, 1914), 346, 637n.; copy of James M. Ellis file from Pension Bureau, Robert B. Barker Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library; Coulter, William G. Brownlow, 263. 11. New York Tribune, Sept. 3, 1866; TCWVQ, 1:1–156; John W. Thornburgh to Rule, Jan. 30, 1870, William Rule Papers, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library.

Pride, Politics, and Pensions

391

Large numbers of these veterans joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a veterans’ organization founded in 1866 to champion patriotism and brotherhood among its members and grant government benefits to them. Tennessee veterans founded and attended its local chapters, named after their former commanders, and sent delegates to its national encampments. Some also established local chapters of Loyal League of America, which supported black suff rage. In Blount County a number of chapters developed. The integrated league at Maryville, active from 1867 to 1869, numbered one hundred members, including several former cavalrymen. As veterans and other unionists encouraged their black allies, Rebel revenge assumed an organized persona through the Ku Klux Klan, a decentralized secret society headed by Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest.12 Union veterans—who could legally carry arms for “personal protection and common defense”—often prevented a safe return by ex-Confederate soldiers to their homes. Returning Tories, wrote a Clifton attorney, “brought with them . . . the spirit of intolerance, boastful arrogance, and impatience with law, engendered by the war.” The combination of “a nest” of armed homegrown Yankees residing on lower Indian Creek, unarmed ex-Rebels still in gray, and “saloons . . . in full swing” at Clifton led to the beating, murder, and expulsion from Wayne County of several veterans of the Lost Cause. In the Cumberlands Colonel Hughs, with whom Champ Ferguson once rode, never returned to Livingston. Neither did Captain Gatewood return to Fentress County. In April 1865 “Gatewood and most of his company,” reportedly “knowing that their conduct deserved death, and that their lives would be unsafe in Georgia . . . left for Texas.”13 Violence and expulsion were much worse in East Tennessee. Two of John McGaughey’s sons, along with another individual, avenged the murder of the major after his capture in January 1865. At Sweetwater in December 1866 they mortally wounded Capt. William Jenkins of Georgia, an officer in the 12. BDTGA, vol. 2; Inez E. Burns, History of Blount County, Tennessee: From War Trail to Landing Strip, 1795–1955 (Nashville, 1957), 65–66; The Republicans of Tennessee and the United States, Memorial, Resolutions, and Proceedings had at a Convention Held at the Capitol, Nashville, February 16th, 1870 (Nashville, 1870), 4; J. H. Blackburn to Stokes, June 12, 1884, William B. Stokes Papers, TSLA; Thomas Waters to Stokes, Oct. 8, 1870, ibid.; Minutes of Republican Executive Committee of Monroe County, Mar. 1878, Luther Meade Blackman Papers, TSLA. 13. Siburt, “Colonel John M. Hughs,” 95; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, “Chattanooga under Military Occupation, 1863–1865,” JSH 17 (Feb. 1951): 41; TCWVQ, 5:2041; Hurlburt, Bradley County, app., 11; Pitts, Reminiscences, 116–22, 167; Hamer, Tennessee, 2:603.

392

Epilogue

raid, though at a tremendous cost—Jenkins killed one son and mortally wounded the other two attackers. But such attacks on ex-Confederates were not always beyond the long arm of the law. William Hulas, “honorably discharged from the 8th Tennessee,” had the “end of [his] toes frozen off ” on Stoneman’s raid in December 1865, and his father, John Hulas of the 13th Tennessee, was wounded at Bulls Gap. But when William, who had “a sense of being wronged,” got drunk and along with others killed Josiah Conley of Jonesborough, “a very conspicuous” Rebel, he was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary.14 Embittered unionists employed both legal and illegal reprisals against Confederates. At Knoxville on September 4, 1865, one hundred 13th Tennessee troopers lynched a prisoner accused of killing one of their own in a confrontation. Union veterans and others filed hundreds of suits against prominent neighbors for damages and deaths caused by them. Some believed such adjudication was preferable to other means because it “prevent[ed] all attempts at . . . redress by lawless, personal violence.” After being placed in “a small iron cage” upstairs in the Knoxville jail since November 1864, Capt. Reuben Clark made bail in June 1865. He was charged with murdering Capt. John A. Gray, formerly of the 1st Tennessee, having reportedly “stripped Capt. Gray . . . , chained him to a tree and riddled his body with bullets.” Clark was acquitted of the crime in January 1866 and shortly thereafter settled in Rome, Georgia. He always contended his innocence and claimed that such persecution had “scattered” the former Confederate soldiers of East Tennessee “over every state in the Union.”15 While unionists often made life miserable for some former Confederates in East Tennessee, much the reverse happened elsewhere. Violence reached the boiling point in Obion County, resulting in several shootings in 1866 and 1867. In what was likely an attempt to assassinate state senator Almon Case, who lost his son Alden at Andersonville, another son, Emmit, was killed as the family returned home from church in September 1866. On January 11, 14. Fisher, War at Every Door, 161; John Hulas to Brownlow, Nov. 20, 1866, Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; Mrs. D. A. Plant, “Recollections of War as a Child, 1861–65,” CV 36 (Apr. 1928): 129–30. 15. McKenzie, One South or Many, 106–7; A. J. Fletcher to Stokes, Stokes Papers, TSLA; PAJ, 7:447n; Thomas W. Humes and others to Brownlow, May 22, 1865, Brownlow Governor’s Papers, TSLA; William R. Rush to Brownlow, Sept. 13, 1865, ibid.; Undersigned Citizens of County of Jefferson to Brownlow, Apr. 6, 1867, ibid.; House, Very Violent Rebel, 184–85; Clark, Memoir, 54–76; Carter, First Regiment, 308.

Pride, Politics, and Pensions

393

1867, Frank Farris, a Rebel deserter turned guerrilla during the war, severely wounded Deputy Sheriff Moses H. Kinman and assassinated Senator Case, both of whom had served in Hawkins’s 7th. The next day Farris and other exguerrillas killed Roland Green, another deputy and Union veteran. Because of such killings, a number of unionists acquired certificates of “permission to carry arms” from the state’s adjutant general’s office.16 Many veterans of the 7th Tennessee were embittered by their lives at Andersonville prison. A large number attributed their physical condition to the “exposure and starvation” they suffered there. Some could not perform manual labor for months, and others dealt with prison-related health problems for decades. Many found it difficult to forgive their former enemies. When Bethel Baptist Church in Carroll County called one of Forrest’s former troopers to be its pastor, merchant Alfred D. Bennett of Huntingdon objected. His fellow parishioners admonished him to forgive the preacher just as Jesus forgave. But Bennett in all sobriety responded that “the Lord was just crucified, he never had to go to Andersonville Prison.”17 Yet outside of East Tennessee, few former Union cavalrymen ever redeemed themselves in the eyes of the majority. Some of Hurst’s former majors gained public acceptance through political, denominational, and philanthropical circles. Legislator Stanford L. Warren of Purdy offered himself as a Conservative alternative to Radical Republicans, Robert M. Thompson had Methodist backing in becoming president of Purdy University, and Memphis banker William J. Smith gained recognition for his beneficence. Locally Smith’s redemption came when in 1878 he volunteered to go with ten “inexperienced nurses” to help relieve some of the suffering of yellow-fever victims at nearby Grenada, Mississippi. According to an observer, the epidemic “did not develop a nobler, braver, and more unselfish man than Gen. W. J. Smith.”18 During and after the war, Congress enacted several laws to benefit veterans of the Union army. An act of July 14, 1862, provided for payments to soldiers for physical disability due to “wounds inflicted or disease contracted in service in line of duty” and to widows and dependent children, mothers, or orphan sisters. Other, more expensive laws benefiting veterans followed dur16. “Adjutant General’s Office . . . permission to carry arms,” TAGO Papers, RG 21, TSLA; Lufkin, “Forgotten Controversy,” 41. 17. Holley, “Seventh Tennessee,” 51. 18. BDTGA, 2:844–45, 955; Adams, “Old Purdy,” 13, 17, 19; Pitts, Reminiscences, 182–83; Otey, “Our Great War,” 108.

394

Epilogue

ing the next two decades. Advertising his services in the 1870s and 1880s, attorney Luther Blackman, formerly with the 4th Tennessee, agreed to handle cases for invalid pensioners, heirs of soldiers, increases in pensions, rejected claims, compensation for lost rations while in prison, challenging claims of desertion, duplicate discharge papers, and the loss of one’s personally owned horse while serving in a mounted unit. As Blackman’s papers reveal, veterans laid claims to almost all the laws available. Because of strict requirements, including hearings, medical examinations, and lengthy appeals, the government denied most claims. None were paid to those individuals who had served in the Confederate army before joining a Union unit.19 In addition to appeals to the Pension Office, appeals could be taken directly to Congress by individual congressmen through private bills. When Bill Stokes was finally seated during the last few weeks of the 39th Congress (ending in March 1867), he devoted great effort to introducing private bills and petitions for his constituents as well as recommending some of his former officers, including Maj. Shelah Waters, for federal positions. His greatest success materialized when Congress approved $125,000 for the payment of Capt. David Beaty’s 102-man unmustered company from in and around Fentress County.20 After years of urging, Congress in 1871 established the Southern Claims Commission to consider claims against the federal government for items seized by the Union army. Although more than four thousand Tennesseans applied, only a small percentage of their claims were paid—in part because of the law’s strict definition of loyalty, the difficulty of proving who had seized the items, and indeed even the existence of those possessions. Matters worsened for claimants when the commission ruled that damage resulting from “unauthorized or unnecessary depredations” of Union troops would not be reimbursed. In Tennessee a large percentage of losses occurred because of such behavior by small squads of soldiers.21 A comparison of the field and company officers of the Tennessee Union mounted regiments with a list of the state’s claimants shows that on average about one officer per regiment filed a claim and that about two-thirds were 19. Kenneth W. Munden and Henry Putney Beers, eds., The Union: A Guide to Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War (Washington. D.C., 1986), 551; Blackman Papers, TSLA. 20. Durrah, “William B. Stokes,” 131–32; George G. Dibrell to Stokes, Dec. 20, 1880, Stokes Papers, TSLA; W. G. Hooper to W. B. Stokes, May 7, 1868, in Shelah Waters Papers, TSLA. 21. Robert Tracy McKenzie, “‘Oh! Ours Is a Deplorable Condition’: The Economic Impact of the Civil War in Upper East Tennessee,” in Noe and Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia, 207–8.

Pride, Politics, and Pensions

395

successful in receiving at least a part of their claims. A sampling of enlisted men reveals almost a total lack of claims. When those recruits left for the army, they were likely to have been less well off and still to have been living with their parents.22 Not all Union cavalry veterans were by any stretch of credulity bitter or vindictive. Oliver P. Chambers “left Knoxville Sept 15–1865 . . . hiked home on foot met one of my frends of before the war who was a confederate soldier . . . and we were friends till his death.” Others like Irvin Hampton simply adapted themselves to the realities of their community or family. Writing in the 1900s, he stated that he had “lived to see [his] children & grandchildren married to the sons & daughters & nieces of the boys who wore the Gray.”23 Most of Tennessee’s Union army veterans took a personal and collective pride in having, as Charles L. Broyles wrote, “had the experience of helping to save the Union.” Regimental reunions, such as those of the First Tennessee Cavalry Association and the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry Association, occurred into the 1900s. Sultana disaster survivors in East Tennessee met annually to honor those who had died on the ill-fated steamboat. A number of monuments erected in that region honor Union veterans. One at Athens reads in part: “Blest be the memory of the grand army boys, through danger and conflict they purchased our joys.” After Pastor Holtsinger died at Greeneville in 1876, veterans of the 1st Tennessee erected a monument to their beloved chaplain’s memory. GAR posts further reinforced the wartime bond, and the federal government added too by the establishment of soldiers’ homes and cemeteries.24 Knoxville attorney Oliver P. Temple’s glowing description of East Tennessee Union army veterans he had known provides at least a part of the mosaic. In his estimation they had “sown their wild oats” in the army and came out of it “older, graver, wiser, more manly.” To him “the army was a vast training school” in which most combatants learned “obedience, subordination, constancy, [and] fidelity.” On a hundred battlefields they had learned that “merit 22. TICW, 1:318–60; Gary B. Mills, Southern Loyalists in the Civil War: The Southern Claims Commission (Laguna, Calif., 1994); Carter, First Regiment, 275–331; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 483–92. 23. TCWVQ, 1:33, 63. 24. Ibid., 1:29; Carter, First Regiment, 268, 272; Wallenstein, ““Helping to Save the Union,’ ” in Noe and Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia, 18; Temple, East Tennessee, 485; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment, 299.

396

Epilogue

and courage were . . . rewarded.” Because their travels brought them into “contact with new men and new objects” beyond their isolated communities, they had returned as “better, broader and more enlightened citizens.” With some exaggeration he wrote that he had lived to see them “filling nearly all the offices of honor and profit in their respective counties.”25 25. Temple, East Tennessee, 526–27, 530.

APPENDIX

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65 Units, Commanders, and Engagements

1st Tennessee Cavalry, April 1862–June 1865

Prior Designations: 4th East Tennessee Infantry, 1st East Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. Robert Johnson of Greene County, April 1862–May 1863, resigned Col. James P. Brownlow of Knox County, May 1863–September 1864, severely wounded Lt. Col. Calvin M. Dyer of Grainger County, September 1864–April 1865, discharged Maj. Russell Thornburgh of Jefferson County, April–June 1865, discharged Engagements: Cumberland Gap, June 18, 1862 Rigg’s Crossroads, southwest of Murfreesboro, April 16, 1863 College Grove, southwest of Murfreesboro, May 8, 1863 Rover, southwest of Murfreesboro, June 23, 1863 Middletown, southwest of Murfreesboro, June 24, 1863 Shelbyville, June 27, 1863 Lafayette, Georgia, September 13, 1863 Chickamauga, Georgia, September 19–20, 1863 Sparta, November 30, 1863 Locations are in Tennessee unless otherwise specified. Most of the information for this listing was taken from the following sources: TICW, vol. 1; RAGT; OR; ORS; Carter, First Regiment; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee; Scott and Angel, Thirteenth Regiment; BDTGA, vol. 2; Amann, Personnel of the Civil War, vol. 2; Humes, Loyal Mountaineers; and PAJ, vols. 4–7.

398

Appendix

Dandridge, December 24, 1863 Mossy Creek, northeast of Knoxville, December 29, 1863 Fair Gardens, southeast of Knoxville, January 27, 1864 Varnell’s Station, Georgia, May 9, 1864 Resaca, Georgia, May 14, 1864 Cassville, Georgia, May 19, 1864 Burnt Hickory, above Atlanta, Georgia, May 26, 1864 Acworth, Georgia, June 4, 1864 Lost Mountain, Georgia, June 16, 1864 Mayson’s Church, Georgia, June 23, 1864 Lovejoy’s Station, east of Newnan, Georgia, July 29, 1864 Newnan, Georgia, July 31, 1864 LaVergne, south of Nashville, September 1, 1864 Franklin, September 2, 1864 Campbellsville, north of Pulaski, September 5, 1864 Pulaski, September 27, 1864 Shoal Creek, east of Florence, Alabama, November 5, 1864 Hart’s Crossroads, northeast of Columbia, November 29, 1864 Franklin, November 30, 1864 Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 Lynnville, north of Pulaski, December 24, 1864 2nd Tennessee Cavalry, July 1862–July 1865

Prior Designation: 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. Daniel M. Ray of Sevier County, August 1862–September 1863, promoted to brigade commander Lt. Col. William R. Cook of Jessamine County, Kentucky, September 1863– March 1864, severely wounded Lt. Col. William F. Prosser, from the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, March–June 1864, promoted to brigade commander Maj. William R. McBath of Knox County, June–November 1864, replaced Lt. Col. William F. Prosser, November–December 1864, replaced Lt. Col. William R. Cook, December 1864–July 1865, discharged Engagements: Murfreesboro, December 26, 1862–January 5, 1863 Middleton, southwest of Murfreesboro, January 31, 1863

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65

399

Franklin, April 10, 1863 Chickamauga, Georgia, September 19–20, 1863 Okolona, Mississippi, February 22, 1864 Sulphur Branch trestle, below Elkmont, Alabama, September 2, 1864 Athens, Alabama, October 2, 1864 Decatur, Alabama, November 26, 1864 Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 Hollow Tree Gap, near Franklin, December 17, 1864 Anthony’s Hill, southwest of Pulaski, December 25, 1864 Sugar Creek, southwest of Pulaski, December 26, 1864 Courtland, Alabama, December 31, 1864 3rd Tennessee Cavalry, August 1862–September 1864

Prior Designations: Pickens’s Cavalry Regiment, 3rd East Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. William C. Pickens of Sevier County, August 1862–November 1863, discharged Lt. Col. Duff G. Thornburgh of Jefferson County, November 1863–June 1864, resigned Maj. John B. Minnis of Jefferson County, June 1864–September 1864, captured Engagements: Murfreesboro, January 1–5, 1863 Middleton, southwest of Murfreesboro, January 31, 1863 Salem Pike, west of Murfreesboro, March 21, 1863 McMinnville, April 20, 1863 Okolona, Mississippi, February 22, 1864 Athens, Alabama, September 24, 1864 Sulphur Branch trestle, below Elkmont, Alabama, September 25, 1864 4th Tennessee Cavalry, July 1862–July 1865

Prior Designation: 4th East Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. Richard M. Edwards of Bradley County, July 1862–June 1863, resigned Lt. Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh, of Jefferson County, June 1863–June 1864, promoted to brigade commander Maj. Meshack Stephens of Morgan County, June 1864–July 1865

400

Appendix

Engagements: Okolona, Mississippi, February 22, 1864 Ten Islands at Greensport, Alabama, July 14, 1864 Beasley’s Station, east of Montgomery, Alabama, July 18, 1864 Lovejoy’s Station, east of Newnan, Georgia, July 29, 1864 Newnan, Georgia, July 31, 1864 Antioch Church, near Moulton, Alabama, August 18, 1864. Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 Hollow Tree Gap and Franklin, December 17, 1864 Anthony’s Hill, southwest of Pulaski, December 25, 1864 Sugar Creek, southwest of Pulaski, December 26, 1864 Spanish Fort, east of Mobile, Alabama, April 2–8, 1865 5th Tennessee Cavalry, July 1862–August 1865

Prior Designations: Stokes’s Cavalry Regiment, 1st Middle Tennessee Cavalry, 1st Alabama Cavalry (Companies A and B) Commanders: Col. William B. Stokes of DeKalb County, July 1862–April 1864, reassigned as post commander at Carthage Lt. Col. William J. Clift of Warren County, April–August 1864, promoted to brigade commander Maj. John F. Armstrong (county of origin unknown), August–November 1864, replaced Lt. Col. William J. Clift, November 1864–February 1865, resigned Maj. John F. Armstrong, February–March 1865, resigned as post commander at Fayetteville Maj. John Wortham of Bedford County and four captains rotated the command from March to August 1865 Engagements: Kinderhook, west of Columbia, August 11, 1862 Dickerson Pike, north from Nashville, September 2, 1862 Franklin Pike, southwest from Nashville, November 1862 Murfreesboro, December 26, 1862–January 5, 1863 Bradyville, east of Murfreesboro, March 1, 1863 Milton, east of Murfreesboro, March 20, 1863 Snows Hill at Liberty, April 13, 1863 Franklin, April 10, 1863

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65

401

McMinnville, April 21, 1863 Streight’s Raid into northern Alabama, April 26–May 3, 1863 Guy’s Gap and Shelbyville, June 27, 1863 Wauhatchie, near Chattanooga, October 28, 1863 Sparta, February 18, 1863 Calfkiller River, near Sparta, February 22, 1863 Beersheba Springs, March 18, 1863 McMinnville, August 29, 1864 Tracy City, August 30, 1864 Murfreesboro, December 7, 1864 6th Tennessee Cavalry, August 1862–July 1865

Prior Designations: 1st West Tennessee Cavalry, 7th Tennessee Infantry (Companies I, K, L, and M) Commanders: Col. Fielding Hurst of McNairy County, August 1862–February 1865, resigned to serve in legislature Col. William J. Smith of Hardeman County, February 1865–July 1865, discharged Engagements: Ripley, Mississippi, October 12, 1862 Forked Deer River near Jackson, December 20, 1862 Trenton, December 20, 1862 Clifton, January 1, 1863 Linden, May 12, 1863 Forked Deer River near Jackson, July 13, 1863 Holly Springs, Mississippi, September 7, 1863 Salem, near Holly Springs, Mississippi, October 7 Byhalia and Wyatte, Mississippi, October 12 Bolivar and Somerville, March 29, 1864 Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 7th Tennessee Cavalry, September 1862–August 1865

Prior Designations: Hawkins’s Cavalry Regiment, 2nd West Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. Isaac R. Hawkins of Carroll County, September–December 1862 Captain Asa N. Hays of Henderson County, April–August 1863 Col. Isaac R. Hawkins, August 1863–March 1864, captured; October 1864– August 1865, discharged

402

Appendix

Engagements: Lexington, December 18, 1862 Salem Cemetery, near Jackson, December 19, 1862 Trenton, December 20, 1862 Union City, March 24, 1864 Union City, September 3, 1864 8th Tennessee, August 1864–September 1865

Prior Designations: 5th East Tennessee Cavalry; 10th East Tennessee Commanders: 5th East Tennessee Col. Jesse H. Strickland, former resident of Davidson County, May–August 1863, discharged Lt. Col. Thomas J. Capps of Knox County, August–December 1863, resigned Maj. John M. Sawyers of Grainger County, December 1863–February 1864 10th East Tennessee Lt. Col. Andrew J. Brown of Washington County, June 1863–February 1864 8th Tennessee Col. Samuel K. N. Patton of Washington County, February 1864–September 1865 Engagements: Greeneville, October 13, 1864 Panther Springs, west of Morristown, October 27, 1864 Morristown, October 28, 1864 Bulls Gap, November 11–13, 1864 North Fork of Holston River near Kingsport, December 10, 1864 Marion, east of Saltville, Virginia, December 16–17, 1864 Saltville, Virginia, December 19, 1864 Saulsburg, North Carolina, March 21, 1864 9th Tennessee Cavalry, August 1863–September 1865

Prior Designation: None Commanders: Col. Joseph H. Parsons of Blount County, August–December 1863, captured Maj. Ethelred W. Armstrong (county of origin unknown), December 1863– August 1864, replaced Lt. Col. John B. Brownlow of Knox County, August–December 1864 Col. Joseph H. Parsons, December 1864–September 1865

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65

403

Engagements: Cumberland Gap, September 8, 1863 Blue Springs, between Greeneville and Bulls Gap, August 23, 1864 Greeneville, September 4, 1864 Greeneville, October 12, 1864 Sneedville, October 21, 1864 Russellville and Morristown, November 13, 1864 Saltville, Virginia, December 19, 1864 10th Tennessee Cavalry, August 1863–August 1865

Prior Designations: None Commanders: Lt. Col. George W. Bridges of McMinn County, August 1863–November 1864, discharged Maj. William P. Story (county of origin unknown), November–December 1864, mortally wounded Maj. James T. Abernathy (county of origin unknown), December 1864–August 1865 Engagements: Blue Springs, between Greeneville and Bulls Gap (Company A only), August 23, 1864 Elk Mound (Elkmont), Alabama, September 24, 1864 Elk River bridge, southeast of Pulaski, September 25, 1864 Richland Creek, near Pulaski, September 26, 1864 Pulaski, September 27, 1864 Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 Franklin Pike, December 17, 1864 11th Tennessee Cavalry, August 15, 1863–March 1865, when it merged into 9th Tennessee Cavalry

Prior Designations: Davis’s Battalion of East Tennessee Scouts, 1st Independent Battalion Cavalry (Companies A–D) Commanders: Lt. Col. Reuben A. Davis of Roane County, August 1863–September 1864, discharged Maj. Edward Black (county of origin unknown), September–October 1864, replaced

404

Appendix

Maj. James H. Johnson of Roane County, October 1864–March 1865, discharged Engagements: Cumberland Gap, September 9, 1863 Near Jonesville, Virginia, February 14, 1864 Wyerman’s Mill, east of Cumberland Gap, February 24, 1864 12th Tennessee, August 1863–October 1865

Prior Designations: None Commanders: Col. George Spalding, formerly lieutenant colonel, 18th Michigan Infantry, August 1863–April 1864, promoted to brigade commander Lt. Col. John S. Kirwan, formerly sergeant in the 4th U.S. Cavalry, April– November 1864, replaced Lt. Col. Charles C. Hoefling, formerly sergeant in the 4th U.S. Cavalry, November 1864, severely wounded Lt. Col. John S. Kirwan, December 1864–October 1865 Engagements: Florence, Alabama, August 10, 1864 Clifton, August 15, 1864 Triune, west of Murfreesboro, August 28, 1864 Elk Mound (Elkmont), Alabama, September 24, 1864 Elk River bridge, southwest of Pulaski, September 25, 1864 Richland Creek, near Pulaski, September 26, 1864 Pulaski, September 27, 1864 Nashville, December 15–16, 1864 Franklin Pike, December 17, 1864 Spring Hill, December 18, 1864 Rutherford’s Creek, above Columbia, December 19, 1864 13th Tennessee Cavalry, October 1863–September 1865

Prior Designation: 12th Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Col. John K. Miller of Carter County, October 1863–April 1864, promoted to brigade command

Tennessee’s Union Cavalry Regiments, 1862–65

405

Maj. George W. Doughty, former East Tennessean of Gordon County, Georgia, April–May 1864, resigned Lt. Col. William H. Ingerton, formerly lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Cavalry, May–December 1864, murdered Lt. Col. Barzilliah P. Stacy, formerly sergeant in the 7th Ohio Cavalry, December 1864–September 1865 Engagements: Rogersville, August 21, 23, 1864 Greeneville, September 4, 1864 Rheatown, Jonesboro, and Carter’s Station, September 27–30, 1864 Panther Springs and Morristown, October 27–28, 1864 Bulls Gap, November 12, 1864 Russellville, November 13, 1864 Big Creek, near Kingsport, December 12, 1864 Wytheville, east of Saltville, Virginia, December 16, 1864 Saltville, Virginia, December 19, 1865 Salisbury, North Carolina, April 12, 1865 14th Tennessee Cavalry, October 1863–February 1865

Prior Designation: Bradford’s Battalion, 13th Tennessee Cavalry Commanders: Maj. William F. Bradford of Obion County, October 1863–April 1864, captured and executed Capt. John L. Poston of Fayette County, August 1864–February 1865 Engagement: Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864

BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscript Collections Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Johnson, Andrew. Papers. Lincoln, Abraham. Papers. Stanton, Edwin M. Papers. McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library, Knoxville, Tenn. Barker, Robert B. Papers. Nelson, Thomas A. R. Papers. Rule, William. Papers. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from Southern States. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office. RG 94. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Census Office. RG 29. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

Thompson, Sarah E. Papers. Williamson, Alice. Diary. Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bills, John Houston. Diary. Cadman, George Hovey. Papers. Carroll, John C. Autobiography and Reminiscence. Fowler, Joseph S. Papers. King, William. Diary.

408

Bibliography

Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville Adjutant General’s Office. Papers. RG 21. Blackman, Luther Meade. Papers. Brownlow, William G. Governor’s Papers. Hancock, William. Papers. Johnson, Andrew. Papers. Robinson, Wingate T. Papers. Sloan, William E. Diary and Memoirs. Stokes, William B. Papers. Wade, Sgt. Benjamin F. Papers. Waters, Shelah. Papers. University Archives and Special Collections, University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville Brownlow, William G. Papers. Carter, Samuel P. Memoir. Cherry, Henry. Letters. Maynard, Horace. Papers. Temple, Oliver P. Papers. Government Documents and Publications Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Fort Pillow Massacre. 38th Cong., 1st sess., 1864. H. Rpt. 65. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Tennessee on the Military Forces of the State from 1861 to 1866. Nashville, 1866. Tennessee House Journal: 33d GA, 2d sess: Nashville, 1861. U.S. Navy Department. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. 31 vols. Washington, D.C., 1894–1927. U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Edited by Robert N. Scott et al. 128 vols. Washington, D.C., 1880–1901. White, Robert H., ed. Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, 1796–1907. 8 vols. Nashville, 1952–72. Newspapers, Periodicals, and Annuals Harper’s Weekly. Knoxville Tri-Weekly Whig and Rebel Ventilator. Memphis Appeal. Nashville Dispatch. Nashville Press and Times. Nashville Republican.

410

Bibliography

with Documents and Letters Relative to his Services in the War with Mexico and the Rebellion. Knoxville, 1895. Cox, Jacob D. Atlanta. New York, 1882. 1. The March to the Sea, Franklin, and Nashville. New York, 1882. 1. Military Reminiscences of the Civil War. 2 vols. New York, 1900. Cozzens, Peter, and Robert I. Girardi, eds. The New Annals of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2004. Crofts, Thomas, comp. The Third Ohio Veteran Volunteer Cavalry in the War for the Preservation of the Union from 1861–1865. Toledo, 1910. Crook, George. General George Crook: His Autobiography. Edited by Mark F. Schmitt. Norman, Okla., 1960. Cumming, Kate. Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. Edited by Richard B. Harwell. Baton Rouge, 1959. Curry, W. L. Four Years in the Saddle: History of the First Regiment Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. Columbus, 1898. Dicey, Edward. Spectator of America. Edited by Herbert Mitgang. Chicago, 1971. Dinkins, James. Furl That Banner: Personal Recollections and Experiences in the Confederate. Cincinnati, 1897. Dodson, W. C. Campaigns of Wheeler and His Cavalry. Atlanta, 1899. Dornbluser, T. F. Sabre Strokes of the Pennsylvania Dragoons in the War of 1861–1865. Philadelphia, 1884. Duke, Basil W. A History of Morgan’s Cavalry. Cincinnati, 1867. 1. Reminiscences of General Basil W. Duke, C.S.A. New York, 1911. Dyer, Gustavus W., and John Trotwood Moore, comps. The Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires. Edited by Colleen Morse Elliott and Louise Armstrong Moxley. 5 vols. Easley, S.C., 1985. Eckel, Alexander. History of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A., War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. Knoxville, 1929. Ellis, Daniel. Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis, the Great Union Guide of East Tennessee for a Period of Nearly Four Years, Written by Himself. New York, 1867. Fanning, Thomas W. Hairbreath Escapes and Humerous Adventures of a Volunteer in the Cavalry Service. . . . . Cincinnati, 1865. Fitch, John. Annals of the Army of the Cumberland. Philadelphia, 1863. Garrett, Jill L., comp. Obituaries from Tennessee Newspapers. Greenville, S.C., 1980. Goodwin, James W. The 4th Regiment Tennessee Cavalry Volunteers. Compiled by James L. Pierce. Cleveland, Tenn., n.d. Grant, Ulysses S. Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Selected Letters, 1839–1865. New York, 1990. 1. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by John Y. Simon. 18 vols. Carbondale, Ill., 1967–91.

Bibliography

411

Grimes, J. H. Recollection of a Long Life. Lebanon, Tenn., 1930. Guerrant, Edward O. Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant. Edited by William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor. Baton Rouge, 1999. Guild, George B. A Brief Narrative of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment: Wheeler’s Corps, Army of Tennessee. Nashville, 1913. Hallum, John. Reminiscences of the Civil War. Little Rock, 1903. Hamilton, William Douglas. Recollections of a Cavalryman of the Civil War after Fifty Years, 1861–1865. Columbus, Ohio, 1915. Hancock, R. R. Hancock’s Diary, or a History of the Second Tennessee Cavalry. Nashville, 1887. Henry, Robert S., ed. As They Saw Forrest: Some Recollections and Comments of Contemporaries. Jackson, Tenn., 1956. Hood, John Bell. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies. Bloomington, Ind., 1959. House, Ellen Renshaw. A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House. Edited by Daniel E. Sutherland. Knoxville, 1996. Hubbard, John M. Notes of a Private, Company E, 7th Tennessee Regiment, Forrest’s Cavalry Corps, C.S.A. Memphis, 1909. Humes, Thomas W. The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee. Knoxville, 1888. Hurlburt, J. S. History of the Rebellion in Bradley County. Indianapolis, 1866. Jackman, John S. Diary of a Confederate Soldier: John S. Jackman of the Orphan Brigade. Edited by William C. Davis. Columbia, S.C., 1990. Jewett, Janet, et al., eds. Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 100 vols. Wilmington, N.C., 1994–2001. Johnson, Adam. The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army: Memoirs of General Adam R. Johnson. Edited by William J. Davis. Austin, 1995. Johnson, Andrew. The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Edited by Leroy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul Bergeron. 16 vols. Knoxville, 1967–2000. Johnson, R. U., and C. C. Buel, eds. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 4 vols. New York, 1884–88. Johnson, R. W. A Soldier’s Reminiscences in Peace and War. Philadelphia, 1886. Johnston, Joseph E. Narrative of Military Operations, Directed during the Late War between the States. New York, 1874. Jones, Katharine M., ed. Heroines of Dixie: Confederate Women Tell Their Story of the War. Indianapolis, 1955. Jordan, Thomas, and J. P. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieutenant General N. B. Forrest and Forrest’s Cavalry. 1868. Reprint, Dayton, 1977. Krug, Mark, ed. Mrs. Hills Journal—Civil War Reminiscences. Chicago, 1980. Larson, James. Sergeant Larson: 4th Cavalry. Edited by A. L. Blum. San Antonio, 1935.

Bibliography

409

Nashville Times and True Union. Nashville Union and American. National Tribune. New York Times. New York Tribune. Published Primary Sources Books Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander. Edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill, 1989. Andes, John W., and Will A. McTeer. Loyal Mountain Troopers: The Second and Third Tennessee Voluntary Cavalry in the Civil War, Reminiscences of Lieutenant John W. Andes and Major Will A. McTeer. Edited by Charles S. McCammon. Maryville, Tenn., 1922. Barber, Lucius W. Army Memoirs of Lucius W. Barber, Company “D,” 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Chicago, 1894. Barnes, William H. The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. 2 vols. New York, 1870. Beers, Fannie A. Memories: A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure during Four Years of War. Philadelphia, 1888. Berry, Thomas F. Four Years with Morgan and Forrest. Oklahoma City, 1914. Billings, John D. Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life. Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell. Chicago, 1960. Bull, Rice C. Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull, 123rd New York Volunteer Infantry. Edited by K. Jack Bauer. San Rafael, Calif., 1977. Carter, W. R. History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Great War of the Rebellion, with the Armies of the Ohio and Cumberland, under Generals Morgan, Rosecrans, Thomas, Stanley, and Wilson, 1862–1865. Knoxville, 1902. Cist, Henry M. The Army of the Cumberland. New York, 1885. Clark, Reuben G. Valley of the Shadow: The Memoirs of Confederate Captain Reuben G. Clark, Company I, 59th Tennessee Mounted Infantry. Edited by Willene B. Clark. Knoxville, 1994. Cogley, Thomas S. History of the Seventh Indiana Cavalry Volunteers. La Porte, Ind., 1876. Coleman, Kenneth, ed. Athens, 1861–1865: As Seen through Letters in the University of Georgia Libraries. Athens, Ga., 1969. Connolly, James A. Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland: The Letters and Diary of Major James A. Connolly. Edited by Paul M. Angle. Bloomington, Ind., 1959. Cook, V. Y. “Forrest’s Capture of Col. R. G. Ingersoll.” CV 15 (January 1907): 54–55. Cooper, Joseph A. A Survivor of Two Wars: Biographical Sketch of Gen. Joseph A. Cooper

412

Bibliography

Mason, Frank H. The Twelfth Ohio Cavalry. Cleveland, 1871. Mattocks, Charles. “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine. Edited by Philip N. Racine. Knoxville, 1994. McDowell, Amanda, and Lela McDowell Blankenship. Fiddles in the Cumberlands. New York, 1943. McGee, B. F. History of the 72d Indiana of the Mounted Lightning Brigade. LaFayette, Ind., 1882. Mead, Homer. The Eighth Iowa Cavalry in the Civil War: Autobiography and Personal Recollections of Homer Mead, M. D. Carthage, Ill., [1925]. Merrill, Catherine. The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union. 2 vols. Indianapolis, 1866. Morton, John Watson. The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry. Nashville, 1909. Mosgrove, George D. Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie: Reminiscences of a Confederate Cavalryman. Edited by Bell Irvin Wiley. Jackson, Tenn., 1957. Olmstead, Charles H. The Memoirs of Charles H. Olmstead. Edited by Lilla Mills Hawes. Savannah, 1964. Pettit, Frederick. Infantryman Pettit: The Civil War Letters of Corporal Frederick Pettit, Late of Company C, 100th Pennsylvania Veteran Infantry Regiment, “The Roundheads,” 1862–1864. Edited by William G. Gavin. Shippensburg, Pa., 1990. Pierce, Lyman B. History of the Second Iowa Cavalry. Burlington, Iowa, 1865. Pitts, John A. Personal and Professional Reminiscences of an Old Lawyer. Kingsport, Tenn., 1930. Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions. . . . Minneapolis, 1893. Ramsey, James G. M. Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey Autobiography and Letters. Edited by William B. Hesseltine. Knoxville, 1954. Ransom, John L. Andersonville. Auburn, N.Y., 1881. Reid, Whitelaw. After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865–1866. New York, 1866. The Republicans of Tennessee and the United States, Memorial, Resolutions, and Proceedings Had at a Convention Held at the Capitol, Nashville, February 16th, 1870. Nashville, 1870. Ridley, Bromfield L. Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee. Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Ripple, Ezra Hoyt. Dancing along the Deadline: The Andersonville Memoirs of a Prisoner of the Confederacy. Edited by Mark A. Snell. Novato, Calif., 1996. Schofield, John M. Forty-Six Years in the Army. New York, 1897. Scott, Samuel W., and Samuel P. Angel. History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A. Philadelphia, 1903. Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. 2 vols. 2nd ed. New York, 1886.

Bibliography

413

Smith, Hugh, et al., eds. Mason Smith Family Letters. Columbia, 1950. Spencer, Cornelia Phillips. The Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina. New York,1866. Stanley, David Sloane. Personal Memoirs of Major General D. S. Stanley, U.S.A. Cambridge, Mass., 1917. Taylor, Richard. Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War. London, 1879. Temple, Oliver P. East Tennessee and the Civil War. Cincinnati, 1899. 1. Notable Men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875: Their Times and Their Contemporaries. Compiled by Mary B. Temple. New York, 1912. Trowbridge, Luther S. A Brief History of the Tenth Michigan Cavalry. Detroit, 1905. Vale, Joseph G. Minty and the Cavalry: A History of Cavalry Campaigns in the Western Armies. Harrisburg, Pa., 1886. Van Horne, Thomas B. History of the Army of the Cumberland: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles. 2 vols. Cincinnati, 1875. Ward, W. W. “For the Sake of My Country”: The Diary of Col. W. W. Ward, 9th Tennessee Cavalry, Morgan’s Brigade, C.S.A. Edited by R. B. Rosenburg. Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1992. Waring, George E., Jr. Whip and Spur. Boston, 1875. Wilson, James Harrison. Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, Etc. 2 vols. New York, 1912. Wilson, Suzanne Colton, comp. Column South: With the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry from Antietam to the Capture of Jefferson Davis. Edited by J. Ferrell Colton and Antoinette G. Smith. Flagstaff, 1960. Wright, Marcus J. Tennessee in the War, 1861–1865. New York, 1908. Wyeth, John A. That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. 1899. Reprint, New York, 1959. Young, J. P. The Seventh Tennessee Cavalry (Confederate): A History. Nashville, 1890. Articles Alderson, William T. “The Civil War Reminiscences of John Johnston, 1861–1865.” THQ 13 (December 1954): 329–54; 14 (March 1955): 43–81; 15 (June 1955): 142–175. Anderson, Charles W. “Gen. Forrest among Civilians.” CV 3 (April 1895): 106. 1. “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” CV 3 (November 1895): 322–25. Barclay, Hugh G. “Reminiscences of Rousseau’s Raid.” CV 30 (June 1922): 208–9. Barron, S. B. “Wheeler’s Cavalry in Georgia Campaign.” CV 14 (February 1906): 70. Bejach, Lois D. “The Journal of a Civil War ‘Commando’: DeWitt Clinton Fort.” WTHSP 2 (1948): 5–32. Bodnia, George, ed. “Fort Pillow ‘Massacre,’ Observations of a Minnesotan.” Minnesota History 43 (spring 1973): 186–90.

414

Bibliography

Blount, T. W. “Captain Thomas William Blount and His Memoirs.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 39 (July 1935): 1–13. Buzby, Howard A. “With Gillem’s Tennesseans on the Yadkin.” In The History of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, edited by Charles H. Kirk, 520–27. Philadelphia, 1906. Chalmers, James R. “General Chalmers’ Report of Operations of Cavalry Division on Line of Memphis and Charleston R.R., from 5th to 13th October, 1863.” Southern Historical Society Papers 8 (January 1880): 222–29. Cimprich, John, and Robert C. Mainfort Jr. “Dr. Fitch’s Report on the Fort Pillow Massacre.” THQ 44 (spring 1985): 27–39. Davenport, Isaac Noah. “Andersonville Prison and the Steamboat Sultana’s Explosion.” In History of Scotts Hill, Tennessee, by Gordon Turner. Southhaven, Miss., 1977. Davis, W. H. “Cavalry Expeditions in Georgia.” CV 16 (June 1908): 261. Eckel, Alexander. “The Rousseau and McCook Raids: Thrilling Adventures, Desperate Chances, Much Hard Fighting, and Narrow Escapes.” In The National Tribune Scrap Book: Stories of the Camp, March, Battle, Hospital, and Prison Told by Comrades, 3:3–12. 3 vols. Washington, D.C., [1909]. Ewing, George D. “The Battle of Blue Springs, Tennessee.” CV 30 (February 1922): 46–48. Fielding, Mary. “Mary Fielding Diary.” In “To Lochaber Na Mair”: Southerners View of the Civil War, edited by Fay Acton Axford. Athens, Ala., 1986. Fitch, C. “Capture of Fort Pillow—Vindication of General Chalmers by a Federal Officer.” SHSP 7 (September 1879): 439–41. John, Samuel Will. “Alabama Corps of Cadets, 1860–65.” CV 25 (January 1917): 12–14. Johnston, John. “Forrest’s March out of West Tennessee, December 1863: Recollections of a Private.” WTHSP 12 (1958): 138–48. Lufkin, Charles L. “West Tennessee Unionists in the Civil War. A Hawkins Family Letter.” THQ 46 (spring 1987): 37–42 Mainfort, Robert C., Jr., and Patricia Coats, eds. “Soldiering at Fort Pillow, 1862– 1864: An Excerpt from the Civil War Memoirs of Addison Sleeth.” WTHSP 36 (1982): 72–90. Mason, Frank H. “General Stoneman’s Last Campaign and the Pursuit of Jefferson Davis.” In Sketches of War History of 1861–1865, by MOLLUS, Commandery of Ohio, 3:21–43. 7 vols.. Cincinnati, 1888–1910. Murray, W. W. “From Macon, Georgia, to the Gulf, an Escaping Prisoner’s Experience.” In Sketches of War History of 1861–1865, by MOLLUS, Commandery of Ohio, 7 vols., 5:88–117. Cincinnati, 1888–1910. Otey, Mercey. “Story of Our Great War.” CV 9 (March 1901): 107–10.

Bibliography

415

Partin, Robert. “A Confederate Sergeant’s Report to His Wife during the Bombardment of Fort Pillow.” THQ 15 (September 1956): 243–52. Phillips, John R. “An Alabama Bluecoat.” Civil War Times Illustrated 9 (November 1970):15–20. Plant, Mrs. D. A. “Recollections of War as a Child, 1861–65.” CV 36 (April 1928): 129–30. Pomeroy, Dan E., ed. “A Letter of Account: Sergeant Clark Tells of the Fort Pillow Massacre.” Civil War Times Illustrated 24 (June 1985): 24–25. Ridley, Bromfield L. “The Battle of Milton or Vaught’s Hill.” CV 7 (July 1899): 535–36. 1. “Champ Ferguson.” CV 7 (October 1899): 442–43. Robertson, Felix H. “On Wheeler’s Last Raid in Middle Tennessee.” CV 30 (September 1922): 334–35. Sanders, D.W. “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign.” CV 15 (September 1907): 401–4. Schroeder, Albert W., Jr., ed. “Writings of a Tennessee Unionist.” THQ 9 (December 1950): 244–72. Scully, J. W. “Death of General John Morgan.” SHSP 31 (1903): 125–28. Shanks, W. F. G. “Chattanooga, and How We Held It.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 36 (1867–68): 142–46, 148–49. Weand, H. K. “Our Last Campaign and Pursuit of Jeff Davis.” In The History of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, edited by Charles H. Kirk, 492–517. Philadelphia, 1906. West, Granville C. “McCook’s Raid in the Rear of Atlanta and Hood’s Army; August 1864.” In The Atlanta Papers, compiled by Sydney C. Kerkis, 541–66. Dayton, Ohio, 1980. Williams, Emma Inman, ed. “Hettie Wisdom Tapp’s Memoir.” WTHSP 36 (1982): 117–23. Williamson, J. C., ed. “The Civil War Diary of John Coffee Williamson.” THQ 15 (March 1956): 61–74. Wyeth, John A. “The Destruction of Rosecrans’s Great Wagon Train.” In The Photographic History of the Civil War, edited by Theo. F. Rodenbrough, 5 vols. Edison, N.J., 1987. Young, J. P. “Hood’s Failure at Spring Hill.” CV 16 (January 1908): 25–29. Younger, William. “The Diary of William Younger.” WTHSP 13 (1959): 55–77. Secondary Sources Books Alexander, Thomas B. Political Reconstruction in Tennessee. Nashville, 1950. Amann, William F. Personnel of the Civil War. 2 vols. New York, 1961. Anderson, Nellie P. The John Pickens Family. Rockford, Tenn., 1951.

416

Bibliography

Arthur, J. P. A History of Watauga County, North Carolina, with Sketches of Prominent Families. Richmond, 1915. 1. Western North Carolina: A History. Asheville, 1914. Ash, Stephen V. Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South. Baton Rouge, 1988. 1. When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill, 1995. Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, 2003. Barefoot, Daniel W. Let Us Die Like Brave Men: Behind the Dying Words of Confederate Warriors. Winston-Salem, N.C., 2005. Barney, William L. Flawed Victory: A New Perspective on the Civil War. New York, 1975. Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill, 1963. Beringer, Richard, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens, Ga., 1986. Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1971. Washington, D.C., 1971. Boatner, Mark Mayo, III. The Civil War Dictionary. New York, 1959. Bonner, James C. Milledgeville, Georgia: Antebellum Capital. Athens, Ga., 1978. Bragg, William Harris. Joe Brown’s Army: The Georgia State Line, 1862–1865. Macon, Ga., 1987. Brewer, James D. The Raiders of 1862. Westport, Conn., 1997. Brooksher, William R., and David K. Snider. Glory at a Gallop: Tales of the Confederate Cavalry. McLean, Va., 1993. Brown, Dee Alexander. The Bold Cavaliers: Morgan’s 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Raiders. New York, 1959. 1. The Galvanized Yankees. Urbana, 1963. Bryant, William O. Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster. Tuscaloosa, 1990. Burns, Inez E. History of Blount County, Tennessee: From War Trail to Landing Strip, 1795–1955. Nashville, 1957. Castel, Albert. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Lawrence, Kan., 1992. Catton, Bruce. Grant Moves South, 1861–1863. New York, 1960. Cimprich, John. Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory. Baton Rouge, 2005. Connelly, Thomas L. Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865. Baton Rouge, 1971. Cooling, Benjamin Franklin. Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee. Knoxville, 1997.

Bibliography

417

Corlew, Robert E. Tennessee: A Short History. 2nd. ed. Knoxville, 1981. Coulter, E. Merton. William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands. Chapel Hill, 1937. Cozzens, Peter. This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga. Urbana, 1992. Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill, 1989. Cullum, George W. Biographical Register of Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., 1802 to 1950. 10 vols. New York, 1950. Culp, Frederick M., and Mrs. Robert E. Ross. Gibson County: Past and Present. Trenton, Tenn., 1961. Current, Richard N. Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy. Boston, 1992. Davis, Stephen. Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnson, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions. Wilmington, Del., 2001. Davis, William C. John C. Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol. Baton Rouge, 1974. DeLozier, Mary Jean. Putnam County, Tennessee, 1850–1970. Cookeville, Tenn., 1979. Denney, Robert E. Civil War Prisons and Escapes: A Day-by-Day Chronicle. New York, 1993. Dodson, W. C. Campaigns of Wheeler and His Cavalry. Atlanta, 1899. Dubose, John Witherspoon. General Joseph Wheeler and the Army of Tennessee. New York, 1912. Dugger, Shepherd M. The War Trails of the Blue Ridge. Banner Elk, N.C., 1932. Dunnavant, Robert, Jr. The Railroad War: N. B. Forrest’s 1864 Raid through North Alabama and Middle Tennessee. Athens, Ala., 1994. Durham, Walter T. Nashville, the Occupied City: The First Seventeen Months, February 16, 1862, to June 30, 1863. Nashville, 1985. 1. Rebellion Revisited: A History of Sumner County, Tennessee, from 1861 to 1870. Gallatin, Tenn., 1982. 1. Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union, July 1, 1863, to June 30, 1865. Nashville, 1987. Dyer, John P. “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler. Baton Rouge, 1941. Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York, 2001. Esposito, Vincent J., ed. The West Point Atlas of the Civil War. New York, 1962. Evans, David. Sherman’s Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign. Bloomington, Ind., 1996. Feis, William B. Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox. Lincoln, Neb., 2002. Fisher, Noel C. War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869. Chapel Hill, 1997.

418

Bibliography

Forrester, Rebel C. Glory and Tears. Union City, Tenn., 1970. Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. 3 vols. 1942–44. Reprint, New York, 1994. Freytog, Ethel, and Glena Kreis Ott. A History of Morgan County, Tennessee. Wartburg, Tenn., 1961. Fuchs, Richard L. An Unerring Fire: The Massacre at Fort Pillow. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002. Garrett, Jill K., and Marise P. Lightfoot. The Civil War in Maury County, Tennessee. [Columbia, Tenn.], 1966. Gilchrist, Agnes A. William Strickland: Architect and Engineer, 1788–1854. New York, 1969. Goodspeed Publishing Company. A History of Tennessee from the Earliest Times to the Present, with Biographical Sketches of Cannon, Coffee, DeKalb, Warren, and White Counties. Nashville, 1887. Govan, Gilbert E., and James W. Livingood. The Chattanooga Country, 1540–1951, from Tomahawks to TVA. New York, 1952. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865. New York, 1995. Groce, W. Todd. Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860– 1870. Knoxville, 1999. Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command. Bloomington, Ind., 1988. Hall, Clifton, Andrew Johnson: Military Governor of Tennessee. Princeton, 1916. Hamer, Philip M. Tennessee, A History, 1673–1932. 2 vols. New York, 1933. Hamilton, J. G. De Roulhac. Reconstruction in North Carolina. New York, 1914. Hart, B. H. Liddell, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American. New York, 1929. Harvey, Stella Mowbray, comp. Tales of the Civil War Era. Crossville, Tenn., 1977. Hattaway, Herman, and Archer Jones. How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War. Urbana, 1983. Hay, Thomas Robson. Hood’s Tennessee Campaign. New York, 1929. Henry, Robert S. “First with the Most” Forrest. Indianapolis, 1944. Hesseltine, William B. Civil War Prisons: A Study in Civil War Psychology. New York, 1930. Hirshson, Stanley P. Grenville M. Dodge: Soldier, Politician, Railroad Pioneer. Bloomington, Ind., 1967. Hogue, Albert R. Mark Twain’s Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee: A History of Jamestown and Fentress County, Tennessee. Jamestown, Tenn., 1950. Horn, Stanley F. The Army of Tennessee. Norman, Okla., 1941. 1. The Decisive Battle of Nashville. Baton Rouge, 1956. Huddleston, Ed. The Civil War in Middle Tennessee. Nashville, 1965.

Bibliography

419

Hughes, Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr., and Roy P. Stonesifer Jr. The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow. Chapel Hill, 1993. Inscoe, John C., and Gordon B. McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill, 2000. Iowa Adjutant General’s Office. Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of the Rebellion Together with Historical Sketches of Volunteer Organizations, 1861–1866. 6 vols. Des Moines, 1916. Johnson, Clint. Civil War Blunders. Winston-Salem, N.C., 1997. Jones, Archer. Civil War Command and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat. New York, 1992. Keenan, Jerry. Wilson’s Cavalry Corps: Union Campaigns in the Western Theatre, October 1864 through Spring 1865. Jefferson, N.C., 1998. Kennett, Lee. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign. New York, 1995. Lawson, Lewis A. Wheeler’s Last Raid. Greenwood, Fla., 1986. Leonard, Elizabeth D. All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies. New York, 1999. Long, E. B., with Barbara Long. The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865. New York, 1971. Longacre, Edward G. Grant’s Cavalryman: The Life and War of General James H. Wilson. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1972. 1. Mounted Raids of the Civil War. New York, 1975. Lonn, Ella. Desertion during the Civil War. New York, 1928. Mackey, Robert R. The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865. Norman, Okla., 2004. Markle, Donald. Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War. New York, 1994. Maslowski, Peter. Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862–65. Millwood, N.Y., 1978. McBride, Robert M., and Dan M. Robinson, comps. Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly. Vols. 1–2. Nashville, 1975, 1979. McDonough, James L., and James P. Jones. War So Terrible: Sherman and Atlanta. New York, 1987. McKenzie, Robert Tracy. Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War. New York, 2006. 1. One South or Many?: Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War–Era Tennessee. New York, 1994. McKinney, Francis F. Education in Violence: The Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland. Detroit, 1961. McMurry, Richard M. Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy. Lincoln, Neb., 2000.

420

Bibliography

McPherson, James M. Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War. New York, 1996. Miles, Jim. Fields of Glory: A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West, the Atlanta Campaign, 1864. Nashville, 1989. Miller, Larry L. Tennessee Place Names. Bloomington, Ind., 2001. Mills, Gary B. Southern Loyalists in the Civil War: The Southern Claims Commission. Laguna, Calif., 1994. Moore, Albert B. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. New York, 1924. Munden, Kenneth W., and Henry Putney Beers, eds. The Union: A Guide to Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War. Washington, D.C., 1986. Nikazy, Eddie M. Forgotten Soldiers: History of the 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment (USA), 1861–1865. Bowie, Md., 1996. Noe, Kenneth W., and Shannon H. Wilson, eds. The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays. Knoxville, 1997. Nosworthy, Brent. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience. New York, 2003. Ott, Glena Kreis. A History of Morgan County, Tennessee. Wartburg, Tenn., 1961. Perkins, Jacob R. Trails, Rails, and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge. Indianapolis, 1929. Ramage, James A. Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan. Lexington, Ky., 1986. Rowell, John W. Yankee Artillerymen: Through the Civil War with Eli Lilly’s Indiana Battery. Knoxville, 1975. 1. Yankee Cavalrymen: Through the Civil War with the Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry. Knoxville, 1971. Sanderland, Glen W. Lightning at Hoover’s Gap: The Story of Wilder’s Brigade. New York, 1969. Sarris, Jonathan Dean. A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South. Charlottesville, Va., 2006. Scaife, William R. The Campaign for Atlanta. Atlanta, 1985. Sensing, Thurman. Champ Ferguson: Confederate Guerilla. Nashville, 1942. Seymour, Digby G. Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War in East Tennessee. Knoxville, 1963. Sifakis, Stewart. Compendium of the Confederate Armies: Tennessee. New York, 1992. Speed, Thomas, Robert M. Kelly, and Alfred Pirtle. The Union Regiments of Kentucky. 3 vols. Louisville, 1897. Speer, Lonnie R. War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation against Civil War POWs. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002. Starr, Stephen Z. Jennison’s Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander. Baton Rouge, 1973.

Bibliography

421

1. The Union Cavalry in the Civil War. 3 vols. Baton Rouge, 1979, 1981, 1985. Stewart, G. Tillman. Henderson County. Memphis, 1979. Storey, Margaret M. Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, 2004. Stout, Henry S. Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American War. New York, 2006. Sutherland, Daniel E., ed. Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front. Fayetteville, Ark., 1999. Sword, Wiley. Embrace an Angry Wind: The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville. New York, 1992. Tennessee Civil War Centennial Commission. Tennesseans in the Civil War: A Military History of the Confederate and Union Units with Available Rosters of Personnel. 2 vols. Nashville, 1964. Thomas, Lately. The First President Johnson. New York, 1968. Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War. New York, 1998. 1. Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June 1865. New York, 1995. U.S. Congress. Medal of Honor Recipients, 1863–1978. Washington, D.C., 1979. Van Noppen, Ina Woestemeyer. Stoneman’s Last Raid. Raleigh, 1961. Volo, Dorothy Denneen, and James M. Volo. Daily Life in Civil War America. Westport, Conn., 1998. Walker, Scott. Hell’s Broke Loose in Georgia. Athens, Ga., 2005. Ward, Andrew. River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. New York, 2005. Weatherbee, F. W., Jr. Reports, Correspondence, and Miscellaneous Records Concerning the 5th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, U.S.A. Montgomery, Ala., 1992. Webb, Thomas G. DeKalb County. Memphis, 1986. Welcher, Frank J. The Union Army, 1861–1865: Organization and Administration. 2 vols. Bloomington, Ind., 1989, 1993. West, Carroll Van, ed. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Nashville, 1998. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis, 1951. 1. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, 1943. Williams, Emma Inman. Historic Madison: The Story of Jackson and Madison County, Tennessee, from the Prehistoric Moundbuilders to 1917. Jackson, Tenn., 1946. Williams, Samuel C. General John T. Wilder: Commander of the Lightning Brigade. Bloomington, Ind., 1986. Wills, Ridley, III. The History of Belle Meade Mansion, Plantation, and Stud Farm. Nashville, 1991.

422

Bibliography

Articles Adams, J. Louis. “Old Purdy.” WTHSP 6 (1952): 5–33. Baggett, James Alex. “Origins of Upper South Scalawag Leadership.” Civil War History 29 (March 1983): 53–73. Bearss, Edwin C. “Cavalry Operations in the Battle of Stones River.” THQ 19 (March 1960): 25–53; (June 1960): 110–44. Blankinship, Gary. “Colonel Fielding Hurst and the Hurst Nation.” WTHSP 34 (1980): 71–87. Bonner, James C. “David R. Snelling.” Georgia Review 10 (fall 1956): 275–82. Bryan, Charles F. “A Gathering of Tories: The East Tennessee Convention of 1861.” THQ 39 (spring 1980): 27–48. Cimprich, John, and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., eds. “Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence about an Old Controversy.” Civil War History 28 (December 1982): 293–306. Coppock, Paul R. “The Killgore Killing.” WTHSP 15 (1961): 40–54. Culp, Frederick M. “Captain George King’s Home Guard Company, CSA.” WTHSP 15 (1961): 55–78. Cunningham, O. Edward. “Captain Frank B. Gurley, Fourth Alabama Cavalry, C.S.A.: Murderer or Victim?” Alabama Review 28 (January 1975): 83–103. Davidson, Henry M. “Experience in Rebel Prison for United States Soldiers.” In Prisoners of War and Military Prisons. Cincinnati, 1890. Donnelly, Ralph W. “The Confederate Lead Mines at Wythe County, Virginia.” Civil War History 5 (December 1959): 402–14. Fishel, Edwin C. “The Mythology of Civil War Intelligence.” In Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, edited by John T. Hubbell, 83–106. Westport, Conn., 1975. Fowler, Russell. “Chancellor William Macon Smith and Judicial Reconstruction: A Study of Tyranny and Integrity.” WTHSP 48 (1994): 35–59. Fretwell, Mark E. “Rousseau’s Alabama Raid.” Alabama Historical Quarterly 18 (winter 1956): 526–51. Gildrie, Richard P. “Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland Valley, 1862–1865.” THQ 49 (fall 1990): 161–76. Govan, Gilbert E., and James W. Livingood. “Chattanooga under Military Occupation, 1863–1865.” JSH 17 (February 1951): 23–47. Hay, Thomas Robson. “The Cavalry at Spring Hill.” Tennessee Historical Magazine 8 (April 1924): 7–23. Herron, W. W. “A History of Lambuth College.” WTHSP 10 (1956): 20–37. Holley, Peggy Scott. “The Seventh Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry: West Tennessee Unionists in Andersonville Prison.” WTHSP 42 (1988): 39–58. Lufkin, Charles L. “Divided Loyalties: Sectionalism in Civil War McNairy County, Tennessee.” THQ 47 (fall 1988): 169–77.

Bibliography

423

1. “A Forgotten Controversy: The Assassination of Senator Almon Case of Tennessee.” WTHSP 39 (1985): 37–50. 1. “The Northern Exodus from Memphis during the Secession Crisis.” WTHSP 62 (1988): 6–29. 1. “ ‘Not Heard from since April 12, 1864’: The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A.” THQ 45 (summer 1986): 133–51. Mainfort, Robert C., Jr. “A Folk Art Map of Fort Pillow.” WTHSP 40 (1986): 73–81. Mallory, Loula G. “The Three Lives of Raleigh.” WTHSP 13 (1959): 78–94. Maness, Lonnie E. “Forrest and the Battle of Trenton.” WTHSP 29 (1975): 121–29. 1. “A Ruse That Worked: The Capture of Union City in 1864.” WTHSP 30 (1976): 91–103. McKay, John E. “Atlanta Campaign.” In Encyclopedia of the Civil War. 5 vols., 1:128– 46. New York, 2000. McMurry, Richard M., ed., “More of ‘Raw Courage.’ ” Civil War Times Illustrated (November 1970): 36–38. McWhiney, Grady. “Who Whipped Whom? Confederate Defeat Reexamined.” In Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, edited by John T. Hubbell, 261–82. Westport, Conn., 1975. Moore, Frederick W. “Representation in the National Congress from the Seceding States, 1861–1865.” American Historical Review 2 (January 1897): 279–93, 461–71. Moran, Nathan K. “Bullets vs. Ballots: Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Congressional Election of 1862.” WTHSP 58 (2004): 1–27. 1. “Military Government and Divided Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Northwest Tennessee, June 1862–August 1862.” WTHSP 48 (1994): 91–106. Potter, Jerry O’Neal. “The First Tennessee Raid of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.” WTHSP 28 (1974) 55–74. Rodabaugh, James H. “The Fighting McCooks.” Civil War History 3 (September 1957): 287–90. Sarris, Jonathan Dean. “Anatomy of an Atrocity: The Madden Branch Massacre and Guerrilla Warfare in North Georgia, 1861–1865.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 77 (winter 1993): 679–710. Siburt, James T. “Colonel John M. Hughs: Brigade Commander and Confederate Guerrilla.” THQ 51 (summer 1992): 87–95. Speer, Ed. “One Moment of Glory: The Life of Private Andrew Campbell of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A.” THQ 60 (winter 2001): 284–93. Starr, Stephen Z. “Cold Steel: The Saber and the Union Cavalry.” In Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History, edited by John T. Hubbell, 107–24. Westport, Conn., 1975. Sutherland, Daniel E. “Guerrilla Warfare, Democracy, and the Fate of the Confederacy.” JSH 68 (May 2002): 259–92.

424

Bibliography

Vandiver, Wellington. “Pioneer Talladega, Its Minutes and Memories.” Alabama Historical Quarterly 16 (summer 1954): 163–297. Dissertations, Theses, and Papers Bryan, Charles F., Jr. “The Civil War in East Tennessee: A Social, Political, and Economic Study.” Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1978. Daniel, John S., Jr. “Special Warfare in Middle Tennessee and Surrounding Areas, 1861–62.” M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1971. Darrah, Marsha Young. “Political Career of Col. William B. Stokes of Tennessee.” M.A. thesis, Tennessee Tech University, 1968. Gunter, Charles R., Jr. “Bedford County during the Civil War.” M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1963. Mackey, Robert R. “The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861– 1865.” Ph.D. diss., Texas A&M University, 2000. Whelan, Paul A. “Unconventional Warfare in East Tennessee, 1861–1865.” M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1962.

INDEX Aberdeen, Miss., 313 Abingdon, Va., 120, 326, 338–39, 345 Acuff, Joel A., 389 Acworth, Ga., 231, 238, 377 Adair, Robert, 291 Adair County, Ky., 29 Adairsville, Ga., 236 Adkins, Jason, 80 Adkins, Jasper, 80 Ainsworth, Charles B., 108 Akin, Warren, 237 Alabama troops: 1st Cav. (USA), 45–46, 96–101, 107–9, 117, 149; 4th Cav. (CSA), 61–63, 105; 7th Cav. (CSA), 273–74, 313; 8th Cav. (CSA), 247–48; Ala. and Tenn. Vedette Cav. (USA), 107–9, 149 (USA); Roddey’s brigade (CSA), 97, 272–74; unidentified (CSA), 250, 305 Albany, Ky., 42 Alexander, Doctor Z., 226 Alexandria, Tenn., 31, 131, 143, 156, 264 Allatoona, Ga., 237 Allender, William F., 65 Alpine, Ga., 109–10 Altamount, Tenn., 108 Ammen, Jacob, 329, 332 Anderson, Charles W., 196–97, 218, 222–24 Anderson (black servant), 37 Anderson County, Tenn., 25–26 Anderson Crossroads, 112 Anderson, Francis M., 151 Anderson, Paul, 255, 265–66, 268, 271 Anderson, Samuel R., 46 Anderson, S.C., 357–58 Andersonville, Ga., 205–7, 223, 225–26, 393 Andes, John W., 23, 74, 188, 313, 362 Anthony Hill, 311 Antioch Church, 173

Arkansas cavalry (CSA), 3rd, 268 armies: Army of the Cumberland (USA), 29, 48, 88, 103, 109, 118, 130, 135, 231, 289, 371; Army of the Ohio (USA), 30, 40, 231, 289; Army of Tennessee (CSA), 9, 48, 69, 139, 146, 170, 289, 304; Army of the Tennessee (USA), 231; Provisional Army of Tennessee (CSA), 213 arms, small: breechloaders, 4, 5, 29, 41, 44, 74, 146, 215, 278–79, 296, 305; revolvers, 41, 44, 74, 215; rifle muskets, 12, 13, 40, 42, 59, 61, 157–58 Armstrong, John F., 299 Ash County, N.C., 126 Ashland City, Tenn., 46 Asheville, N.C., 355–57, 359 Ashville, Ala., 247 Ashville Vidette, 247 Athens, Ala., 9, 270, 275–78, 284, 361, 381 Athens, Ga., 358 Athens, Tenn., 162–63, 282 Atlanta, Ga., 231, 245, 272, 285, 289 Atwell schoolhouse, 93 Auburn, Ala., 249 Augusta, Ga., 242, 245, 251 Ausley, Thomas A., 37 Avery, Isaac W., 112 Avery, William W., 136 Bailey, Joseph, 366 Bainbridge, Ala., 282 Baird, Harlon, 250 Barbourville, Ky., 23, 25 Bardstown, Ky., 70 Barney, William L., 5 Barr, Ella, 278 Barr, Henry W., 278 Barr, John C., 217

426

Index

Barry, Joseph G., 176, 363 Barry, Peter L., 339 Barteau, Clark R., 187, 217, 218, 275 Barton, Charles L., 23 Bass, Ezekiel W., 45, 144–45, 148 Bassham, Ely F., 362 Bate, William B., 299–300 Baton Rouge, La., 366 Bean, William H., 162 Beans Station, Tenn., 335, 337 Beard, Stephen, 159 Beasley’s Station, Ala., 250 Beattie, John W., 201–4, 208 Beaty, Avy, 28–29 Beaty, Claiborne, 29 Beaty, Dallas, 29, 143 Beaty, David C.: background of, 28; bushwhacking of, 29, 64; capture of, 372; company of, 29, 140–43, 148; pillaging of, 142; threatened, 28– 29, 142; mentioned, 394 Beaty, George, 28 Beaumont, E. B., 293 Beaver Dam, 154 Beazley, R. H., 198 Bedford County, Tenn., 13, 45, 108, 139 Beech Creek, 62 Beersheba Spring, Tenn., 146, 148 Bell, Tyree H., 177 Belle Meade plantation, 46, 193, 305, 319 Bellevue, Tenn., 81 Bennett, Alfred D., 393 Bennett, James D., 47 Bennett, Robert, 47 Benton, Tenn., 261 Berry, Thomas, 222 Bethania, N.C., 352 Bethel Baptist Church, 393 Bethel Springs, Tenn., 37, 61, 171 Biffle, Jacob B., 32, 154, 172 Big Creek, 42 Big Shanty (Kennesaw), Ga., 238 Bischoff, Peter, 221 Bishop, James M., 51–52 Blackburn, James H., 92 Blackburn, Joseph H.: commanding, 156, 158, 163, 264–65, 372; fighting guerrillas, 143, 145, 157, 159, 380; recruiting regiment, 155, 265; at Snows Hill, 93; at Vaughn’s Hill, 91–92; mentioned 101, 373 Blackman, Luther M., 114–15, 297, 394 blacks: as contraband, 80, 106, 201, 280, 352; as

freedmen, 320, 322; as guides, 256; as informants, 90, 327–28, 355; as refugees, 186–87, 136, 207; as slaves, 66, 109, 184, 186, 203, 213, 277, 280–81; as soldiers, 155, 214–16, 220–21, 224, 260, 275–76, 280, 388; women, 89, 327 Bledsoe, Willis S., 28, 108, 143, 147, 265 Bledsoe County, Tenn., 161 Blount County, Tenn., 38–39, 311 Blountsville, Ala., 98–99, 246 Blountsville, Tenn., 124, 338 Blue Bird, 182 Blue Springs, Tenn., 325 Boland, Sater, 295 Bolinger, Isaac, 49 Bolivar, Tenn., 52–53, 60, 63, 67, 168, 170, 176, 192, 196, 198 Bond, David L., 152 Boone, N.C., 349–50 Booth, Lionel F., 214–17, 222, 377 Booth, Lizzie, 217 Bostona, 368 Boswell, Thomas H., 52, 175 Bowen, John W., 139 Bowman, Nelson, 130 Boyce, Jeremiah, 51–52 Boyd, Spencer B., 152, 160, 162 Boyer, Creed, 159 Boyer, Joseph C., 307 Bozarth, Joseph, 152 Bradford, Jack, 171 Bradford, Theodorick, 214, 223 Bradford, William F., 9, 52–53, 196–97, 211–16, 218, 220–23, 375, 377 Bradford, Ala., 249 Bradford, Tenn., 389 Bradley County, Tenn., 24–25, 38, 41–42, 50, 79 Bradyville, Tenn., 6, 88, 91 Bragg, Braxton, 48, 56, 59, 60, 67, 69, 87, 96, 100, 110–12, 156, 170 Bratten, Thomas G., 156–57 Brayman, Mason, 52, 60, 63, 200–203 Breckinridge, John C., 329–33, 341, 345–46 Breckenridge, William K. M., 67, 172, 173 Brentwood, Tenn., 296, 307 Bridge burners, 23–25 Bridgeport, Ala., 79–80, 107, 112, 117, 147 Bridges, George W., 79, 293, 299, 376, 379 Bristol, Tenn., 337–39, 345 Brixey, Calvin, 108, 149 Brown, Andrew J., 320 Brown, Ennos, 80

Index Brown, J. L., 69 Brown, Joseph E., 160 Brown, Maria, 356 Brown, Mary, 356 Brown, Simeon B., 348, 351–52, 357 Brown, Vance, 356 “Brown Creekers,” 33–34, 168 Brownlow, James P.: description of, 3, 15–26; in East Tenn., 3, 130–33, 137, 139; in Middle Tenn., 70–73, 82, 103–4, 106, 116, 129–30, 363, 376; in North Ga., 3, 110, 231, 233, 236– 43, 252–57, 259, 377; opposing Wheeler, 267– 68, 271; mentioned: 70, 387–88 Brownlow, John B., 122, 124, 328, 390 Brownlow, William G.: as editor, 3, 130–31, 330, 345; as governor, 386–87; as politician, 239, 360; as refugee, 25, 30, 54, 70; as tax agent, 72, 130 Brownlow’s Hill, 239, 243 Brown’s Ferry Road, 117 Brown’s Mill, 254–55, 257–58 Brownsville, Tenn., 53, 167, 196, 223 Broyles, Charles L., 395 Bryson, Goldman, 134–35 Buckhead, Ga., 242 Buckley, Harvey M., 340–41 Buell, Don Carlos, 10, 30–31, 44, 48, 96, 102 Buena Vista, Miss., 186 Buford, Abraham, 281–84, 292, 294, 296, 310 Buford, Napoleon B., 209 bugle calls, 51 Bulls Gap, 325–26, 328–31, 378 Burbridge, Stephen G., 329, 335, 337–39, 341–46 Burkhart, Thomas, 26 Burnside, Ambrose, 106, 120–30, 134, 136, 141, 326 Burnsville, N.C., 135 Burnt Hickory, Ga., 237 Burrow, Reuben, 169 bushwhackers, 6, 32, 42, 108–9, 141, 171, 184, 200, 264, 299, 313 Butler, Roderick R., 125, 321 Byhalia, Miss., 175, 176 Byrd, Robert K., 23, 120–21 Caesar’s Head Mountain, 357 Cain, Robert E., 117 Cainsville, Tenn., 91–92 Cairo, Ill., 200–201, 203, 368 Caldwell, Sam, 222 Calfkiller River, 144, 148

427

Calhoun, Ga., 236, 260 camp followers, 186–87, 189, 354, 357 campaigns: Atlanta, 2–3, 231–58, 377; Chickamauga, 3, 103–111; East Tenn., 2–3, 122–36; Meridian, 181–91; Mobile, 362, 364–66; Nashville, 2–3, 289–315; Shiloh, 5, 9, 302; Stones River, 2, 56–60, Tullahoma, 2–3, 103–6 Campbell, Andrew J., 327–28, 371 Campbell, Andrew W., 170 Campbell, Archibald P., 103, 129, 131–33 Campbell, Henry, 233 Campbell, Wallace, 275–78, 283–84 Campbell County, Tenn., 49 Campbellville, Tenn., 270–71, 292 camps: Chase 68; Catlett, 193–319; Dennison, 50, 69; Dick Robinson, 23, 120; E. M. Stanton, 26; Etheridge, 37; Fisk, 367; Gillem, 319; Gurber, 25; Lew Wallace, 68; Monroe, 50; Morton, 81; Nelson, 127, 129; Smith, 259; Spears, 78; Stanley, 94; Sumter, 205; Vance, 136; Webster, 293 camps of instruction, 68 Canby, Edward R. S., 362, 364–66 Caney Fork River, 265, 269 Cannon, E. J., 132 Canton, Miss., 182 Cantrill, James F., 326 Capps, Thomas J., 124, 137 Capron, Horace, 290, 293–94 Carpenter, Daniel A., 121–23, 125, 128, 137 Carroll County, Tenn., 31, 34, 37, 53, 153, 393 Carter, Captain, 61 Carter, George W., 143–45, 157–58 Carter, James P. T., 23, 25, 122, 125 Carter, Robert C., 25 Carter, Samuel P., 25, 126, 136–37 Carter, William B., 23, 25 Carter, William R., 72–73, 103, 239, 267, 304 Carter County, Tenn., 13, 125, 370 Carthage, Tenn., 46, 69, 82, 88–89, 93–94, 101, 138–40, 143, 146–52, 155–56 Case, Alden, 392 Case, Almon, 392 Case, Emmit, 392 Casement, John, 128–29 Cassville, Ga., 231, 236–37, 243, 377 Cassville Female Seminary, 237 Cate, William L., 365 Catoosa Springs, Ga., 233 cavalry: camp life, 3, 15, 75, 106, 129, 133, 319; cost of, 144; and detachments, 6–7; discipline,

428

Index

cavalry (continued) enforced, 103, 151, 193, 212, 320, 362; discipline, lack of, 13, 105, 158, 189, 298, 369; disdain of, 232, 238, 272, 315; dismounted, 11– 12, 52, 134, 143, 199, 272, 278, 290, 361, 366; equipment of, 11–12; functions of, 3–4, 7, 11, 147; history of, 4, 22, 156; horsemanship of, 4, 5, 322; neglect of, 11–12, 48, 126, 146; overworked, 72, 281; rations of, 31, 233, 154, 159, 337, 348, 356–57; shelter for, 103, 127, 193, 213, 319; starvation of, 40, 114, 362; and terrain, 244; training of, 38–40, 50–51, 71, 78, 120, 126, 319, 322; uniforms of, 43, 50; weapons of, 4–5, 12, 42, 50, 71, 78, 146 Cavalry Bureau, 150, 298 Cedar Bluff, 99–100 Centerville, Tenn., 154–55 Chalmers, James R.: and Fort Pillow, 216, 218, 222, 224; guarding Miss., 168, 174–76; and Nashville Campaign, 292, 294, 299, 305, 307–8 Chambers, Oliver P., 395 Champion, James, 349 Chapel Hill, Tenn., 72 Charleston, S.C., 207 Charlotte, N.C., 354 Charlotte, Tenn., 80, 155 Chattahoochee River, 240–42, 244, 253, 258, 377 Chattanooga: as Confederate army base, 79, 105; as railroad center, 1, 44; and Steedman, 161, 260–61, 297–98; as strategic center, 5; as Union army base, 111–13, 118, 149, 174, 199, 231 Cheatham, Benjamin F., 56 Cheatham County, Tenn., 80 Chehaw Station, Ala., 250, 258 Cherokee Baptist College, 237 Cherokee County, N.C., 134 Cherokee Station, Ala., 274, 289 Chickamauga, Battle of, 2, 111, 118, 301–2 Chickamauga Creek, 110 Christenberg, James M., 213 Christian Commission, 259 Christiana, Tenn., 115 Christianburg, Va., 352 churches: as arsenals, 340; as battle sites, 273, 294; burning of, 176; as headquarters, 59, 295; for rendezvous, 142–43, 176; for shelter, 196, 200 Cincinnati, Ohio, 50 Citronelle, Ala., 366

Claiborne, Jack, 9 Claiborne, John W., 108 Clanton, James H., 247, 250 Clark, Achilles V., 221 Clark, Reuben G., 13, 392 Clarke, James, 156–57 Clarksville, Tenn., 69, 155 Claysville, Ala., 247 Cleary, William L., 212, 225 Clements, Andrew, 27, 149, 150–51, 163 Clements, Leroy, 27 Cleveland, William J., 152 Cleveland, Tenn., 39, 160–62 Cliffe, Danial B., 268 Clift, William, 25 Clift, William J., 146 Clifton, Tenn., 60–62, 67, 109, 152–55, 391 Clinton, Robert H., 225 Clinton County, Ky., 27–28, 42 Coffeeville, Miss., 185 Cold Creek, 215, 217, 218 College Grove, Tenn., 57, 73 Collierville, Tenn., 175, 181–83 Collins, Harrison, 310, 314 colors, regimental, 59, 88–89, 267, 300, 340 Columbia, Tenn., 31–32, 34, 129, 181, 182, 269, 272, 281, 292–94, 301 Columbus, Ga., 205, 251 Columbus, Ky. , 35, 65–66, 177, 199–201, 203, 208, 212 Colyer, Olivia J., 26 Confederate frontier, 6 Confederate interior, 6 Conley, Joseph, 392 conscription: Confederate 27, 32, 50, 68, 80, 170, 174, 177; Union, 263 conventions: district, 53; local, 52–53; national, 34, 239, 262; regional, 1, 22–23; state, 360 Cook, William R., 41, 182, 299, 361, 379 Cooke County, Tenn., 132 Cookeville, Tenn., 143–44, 269–70 Cooling, Benjamin F., 7 Coon, Datus E., 306–7, 309 Cooper, Duncan B., 46 Cooper, Joseph A., 155 Corinth, Miss., 48, 52, 61, 63, 176–77 Cosby, George, 336 Cottonport, Tenn., 112 Couch, Reuben C., 94 Councill, James D., 350–51 couriers, 76, 87, 109, 116, 127, 336

Index Courtland, Ala., 273, 312 Covington, Ga., 251, 260 Covington, Ky., 49 Covington, Tenn., 171 Cowan, Tenn., 262 Cox, Colonel, 136 Cox, Jacob D., 236, 303 Cox, Samuel S., 78 Craig, John S., 38 Crane, Jeremiah H., 323 Crawfish Springs, 110–11 Crawford, Robert A., 120, 159 Crawford, Robert C., 33 Crawfordville, Ga., 358 Crittenden, Thomas T., 56, 59 Crockett Station, Tenn., 168 Crook, George, 89, 94, 103, 110–16 Cropsey, Andrew J., 140 Crow, Christly, 338 Crow, John, 338 Crow Valley, Ga., 235 Croxton, John T.: defense of railroads by, 267, 270–71, 281; at Mayson’s Church, 242–43; on McCook’s raid, 253–55; and Nashville Campaign, 290–91, 293–96, 305, 308–10; mentioned, 363 Cruft, Charles, 46 Cumberland County, Tenn., 42, 161 Cumberland Gap, 26, 38, 40–41, 43, 122–24, 127, 133–34, 335 Cumberland Institute, 145, 262 Cumberland Mountains, 1, 42, 51, 262 Cumberland River, 5, 30, 47, 70, 80, 82, 88 Cumberland River valley, 3, 140–41, 143, 147, 149–50, 152, 155, 163, 262, 264–65 Cunningham, Ben, 279, 366 currency: Confederate, 253; Union, 109, 178, 193, 277, 284 Dahlonega, Ga., 160 Dallas, Ga., 237 Dalton, Ga., 139, 146, 158, 162, 231, 233, 235, 260 Danbury, N.C., 352 Dandridge, Tenn., 122, 131, 137, 376 Daugherty, Fred, 142 Davidson, Henry B., 112, 115–16 Davidson, Henry M., 205 Davidson County, Tenn., 44 Davis, Dick, 171 Davis, Jefferson, 232, 278, 357–58 Davis, John (of Liberty, Tenn.), 45

429

Davis, John (of Trenton, Tenn.), 66 Davis, Reuben A., 122, 124, 133–34 Davis, Russ B., 314 Deakins, James E., 330 Decatur, Ala., 109, 231, 245, 272–75, 277, 282, 289, 312, 314, 361 Decatur County, Tenn., 34, 153, 260 Decherd, Tenn., 63, 147 DeCourey, John F., 124 Deford, R. D., 175 Dekalb County, Tenn., 13, 27, 31, 44–45, 138–39 Democratic Party, 16, 54, 262, 390 Denton, William J., 355 departments, army (territorial): Cumberland (USA), 77; East La., Miss., and Ala. (CSA), 274; Southwestern Va. and East Tenn. (CSA), 8, 325–26 desertion: causes of, 80, 82, 124, 174, 322, 342, 160, 342; by cavalrymen, 174; of Confederate troops, 35–36, 80, 107–9, 118, 138–39, 153, 160, 284, 347, 363; results of, 80, 153, 160; of Union troops, 152, 216, 363 Devine, Joseph, 162–63 Dial, James I., 163 Dial, Ga., 160 Dibrell, George G., 62, 64–65, 262–63, 271, 324 Dicey, Edward, 30 Dickson, Tenn., 81 diseases and sickness: diarrhea, 206, 320, 362– 63, 367; dysentery, 110, 206; and exposure, 73; pneumonia, 206, 367; scurvy, 77, 205–6; smallpox, 181, 187, 193, 319; typhus, 206, 367; venereal diseases, 77; mentioned, 77, 73, 205, 321 districts, army (territorial): East Ark. (USA), 209; East Tenn. (USA), 348; Etowah (USA) 161; Middle Tenn. (USA), 372; Mountain (CSA), 336; North Ala. (USA), 260; Northern Kans., 370; Western Ky., 51 Dodge, Grenville M., 36, 61, 63, 67, 96–97, 376 Dodson, N.C., 351 Dorr, Joseph B., 133, 231, 233, 240, 242 Doughty, George W., 127, 137, 330, 335 Douglas Church, 295 Douglass, DeWitt C., 75 Dowdy, Rufus, 140–41, 143, 151 Dresden, Tenn., 37–38 drunkenness: causes of, 42, 50, 364; of enlistees, 77, 182, 364, 378; of officers, 72, 124, 261–62, 276, 298, 378–79 Duck River, 104, 155, 293–94, 310

430

Index

Ducktown, Ga., 135 Duckworth, William L., 200, 202–4, 223 Dug Gap, 235 Duke, Basil, 29–36, 92–93, 95, 320, 330–31, 336– 38, 341, 344, 346 Duncan, Mr., 184 Durhamville, Tenn., 169 Dyer, Calvin, 268, 270, 290–91, 301, 305–6, 312, 388 Dyer, Patrick, 340 Dyer County, Tenn., 53 Eaglesville, Tenn., 75 Easley, Thomas, 365 Eastport, Miss., 97, 363 Echols, John, 351 Eckel, Alexander, 78, 248, 252, 258 Edgefield, Tenn., 47, 194, 304, 362, 366 Edwards, Richard M.: background of, 40–41; movement of, from Ky. to Tenn., 69–70; regiment raised by, 38, 42, 49–51, 77–78; opposing mounted infantry, 149, 163; and staff disputes, 82 Eldridge, Charles M., 368 elections: district, 1, 22, 27, 52–53; local, 161; national, 147, 291–92; state, 22, 161, 196 Elizabethton, Tenn., 24, 321, 349 Elk Mound, Tenn., 280 Elkin, N.C., 351 Elkton, Tenn., 280–81 Ellijay, Ga., 80 Elliott, Jonas, 278 Elliott, Washington L., 130, 133, 290 Ellis, Daniel: background of, 125; and pacification, 347, 370, 387; as recruiter, 125, 319, 321, 348 Emancipation Proclamation, 53 Emory and Henry College, 336 Engelmann, Adolph, 64 Enterprise, Miss., 283–84 Essex, 368 Estes, Ab, 204 Estill Springs, Tenn., 146 Etheridge, Emerson, 37 Evans, David, 244 Evans, Eli, 45 Exum, James T., 159 Fain, William C., 135 Fair Garden, Tenn., 133, 376 Fannin County, Ga., 135, 160

Farmington, Tenn., 116, 118 Farris, Frank, 393 Faulkner, William W., 200–201 Fayette County, Tenn., 53, 173 Fayetteville, Ga., 251–52 Fayetteville, Tenn., 106, 281, 363, 370 Fentress County, Tenn., 25, 27–28, 32, 159 Ferguson, Champ: background of, 44, 141; fear of, 264; as guerrilla, 13, 28–30, 32, 130, 140– 45, 148, 157–58, 336; trial and execution, 372– 73; mentioned, 42, 391 Ferguson, Jim, 42 Ferguson, William, 223 Ferguson family, 141 Fielding, Mary, 361 Findley, James J., 160 Fish River, 365 Fishel, Edwin C., 383 Fitch, Charles, 215 Fitch, John, 89 Flat Gap (N.C.), 350 Flat Gap (Tenn.), 131 Fleming, Eli G., 45 Florence, Ala., 272, 283, 289–92, 311, 363 Flynn, Richard, 42 Flynn, Zilphia, 42 Flynn’s Cove, Tenn., 42 Flynn’s Lick, Tenn., 147 foraging: abuses of, 14, 15, 102, 105, 154, 355, 357–58, 359, 383; aims of, 74, 87, 93, 102, 106, 352–53; and cavalry, 13, 46, 103, 154; and liquor, 358; prohibition of, 31, 43, 198, 362; reactions to, 108, 357; tradition of, 14; and troop demoralization, 358; typical scenario of, 91, 102 Forked Deer Crossing, 64–65 Forked Deer River, 60, 63, 173, 205 Forkner, Lawrence, 280 Forrest, Bill, 97–98 Forrest, Jeff rey, 190 Forrest, Nathan Bedford: assessment of, 7–9; defense of Hood’s army by, 289; defense of north Miss. by, 186–91, 273; Middle Tenn. raids of, 29, 32, 44, 47–48, 259; in North Ala., 97; West Tenn. raids of, 53, 60–68, 179, 196; mentioned, 153, 170, 192, 391 Fort, DeWitt Clinton, 221 fortifications: abates, 199, 276, 355; barricades, 235, 239, 267, 294, 307; blockhouses, 271, 278– 79, 281, 300, 384; breastworks, 239, 296; ditches, 220, 276; earthworks, 128, 199, 278;

Index entrenchments, 128, 296; fences, 191; redoubts, 278–79, 305, 308; rifle pits, 215, 342, 355; stockades, 199, 201, 205, 264, 276, 366; walls, 220, 279, 306; mentioned, 198, 281 Fortress Rosecrans, 299–301 forts: Barrancas, 365; Blakely, 365; Breckinridge, 342–43; Donelson, 7, 9, 30, 69–70; Halleck, 199; Henry, 7, 9, 30, 192; Leavenworth, 370, 387; Liberty, 264; Morgan, 365; Pickering, 198; Pillow, 9, 168–69, 196; Sanders, 128; Sumter, 208; Thomas, 265. See also Fortress Roescrans; and Spanish Fort Foster, John G., 130, 208 Franklin, Tenn., 48, 70, 76, 155, 267, 269, 271, 280, 295–97, 301–2, 308 Franklin House, 334 Frazier, John W., 122 Freedmen’s Bureau, 388 French Broad River, 132 Fry, Jacob, 60, 65–66 furloughs: of Confederate troops, 263–65; of Union troops, 264 Gadsden, Ala., 99 Gainsboro, Tenn., 149 Galbraith, Robert, 93–96, 104–6, 115, 139, 143, 148, 370 Gallatin, Tenn., 32, 69, 143, 151–52, 155, 264–65, 297, 319–22, 333, 371, 379 Gallipolis, Ohio, 43, 49 “Galvanized Yankees,” 81 Gardner, John A., 204 Gardner, William M., 353 Gardner’s Station, Tenn., 200, 204 Garfield, James A., 96 Garner, Jackson, 143 Garrard, Israel, 123, 131 Garrard, Kenner D., 231, 232, 251 Garrett, Abraham E., 150–52, 163, 377, 389 Garrison Andrew J., 151, 264–65 Garrison, Marion J., 329 Gatewood, John P., 135, 145, 158, 161–62, 391 Gaus, Joe, 220 Gaylesville, Ala., 99, 290 Gay’s Gap, 104 Geary, John W., 117, 235 General Order No. 100 (USA), 179–80, 383 Germantown, N.C., 352 Germantown, Tenn., 174, 191 Gholson, Samuel J., 186, 191 Gibson County, Tenn., 34

431

Gideon, Col., 340 Giles County, Tenn., 109 Gillem, Alvan C.: as division commander, 109, 141, 153, 211, 231, 260, 272, 298, 319; in N.C., 350–57; as regiment commander, 77, 83; and southwestern Va., 337–45; as Tenn. adjutant general, 17, 83, 129, 150–51; and upper East Tenn., 8, 301, 319–31, 361, 378; mentioned, 334–36 Giltner, Henry L., 122–23, 326–27, 336 Glade Springs, Va., 339, 342 Glasgow, Ky., 69–70, 127, 139 glee club, 40 Gooch, Daniel W., 224 Goodwin, James W., 50, 192, 251, 308, 311, 365 Gordon-Lee House, 110 Gordon’s Mill, 161 Gorman, Thomas J., 311 Gourley, William M., 340 Gowin, George A., 161 Graham, Thomas, 247 Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), 391, 395 Grand Junction, Tenn., 52, 167–68, 173–74, 209, 379 Granger, Gordon, 103, 270, 274, 276–77, 282, 299 Grant, Ulysses S., 30, 35–36, 60–61, 66–67, 106, 117, 139–40, 150, 167, 169, 177, 179, 232, 280, 289–90, 303, 348 Grants Creek bridge, 353 Granville, Tenn., 147, 151, 264 Gravelly Springs, Ala., 361–62 Graves County, Ky., 200 Gray, Thomas P., 201, 203, 215 Green, Roland, 393 Greene County, Tenn., 26 Greeneville, Tenn.: convention at 1, 23; and Longstreet, 128; and Morgan, 8, 159, 325–30, 333; refuges from, 23, 25–26, 38 Greensboro, Ga., 359 Greensport, Ala., 247 Gregory, Jonathan F., 211–14 Grierson, Benjamin H., 177–78, 183, 198, 209, 290 Grimes, J. H., 140 Grimsley, Mark, 102, 179 Grissom, Jim, 263 Grissom, Marcellus, 263–64 Grissom, Tom, 263 Grose, W. Todd, 16, 39 Grundy County, Tenn., 108

432

Index

guerrilla warfare: and army regulars, 138–39, 147–48, 269; leaders of, 140, 156; location of, 53, 105, 107, 147, 161, 169, 209, 213, 320, 385; nature of, 53, 138, 141, 145, 147, 156; origins of, 148, 156, 169; rendezvous for, 140; support of, 148, 156, 162; surrender of, 371; termination of, 139, 144–46, 151, 154–55, 158–59, 162–64, 167, 170–71, 176, 225, 260, 370–71, 383; mentioned, 213, 320 guides: for refugees, 1; for U.S. troops, 26, 49– 50, 107, 121, 277 Guild, George B., 263–64, 284 Gwyn, James, 350 Gurley, Frank B., 62, 106 Hale, Jonathan D., 27, 29 Hall, Albert S., 91–92 Halleck, Henry W., 37, 44, 344 Hallum, John, 54 Hamilton, Frank H., 77 Hamilton, Oliver P., 129, 140, 144, 158, 336 Hamilton, William D., 246 Hamilton County, Tenn., 38 Hammond, John H., 293, 297, 301, 306, 309–11 Hammond gang, 142 Hampton, Irvin, 395 Hancock, Nancy, 275 Hancock, William B., 275 Hardee, William J., 57, 232 Hardeman County, Tenn., 52–53 Hardin County, Tenn., 33 Harding, Elizabeth M., 45–46 Harding, John, Jr., 81 Harding, William G., 193 hard-war policy, 7 Hardy, Milton W., 153 Harper, Ellis, 32, 371 Harris, George W. D., 197 Harris, Isham, 22, 30, 33, 170, 197 Harris, Thomas W., 53 Harrison, Thomas, 101, 311 Harrison, Thomas J., 245, 251–52, 254 Hart, John R., 161 Hatch, Edward, 168, 173–74, 283, 290–93, 296, 298, 301, 304–6, 308–11 Hathaway, Gilbert, 98–99 Hathaway, Herman, 7, 33, 195 Hathaway, William L., 93, 155–57 Hawkins, Alvin, 53, 174 Hawkins, Isaac: failure of, in battle, 8, 61–63, 220; as prisoner, 207; regiment raised by, 34,

36, 52; resumption of command by, 168; at Union City, 178, 198–200; mentioned, 53, 55, 390 Hawkins, Samuel W., 204–5 Hays, Asa, 33, 168, 203 Hays, John, 157 Haywood County, Tenn., 53, 173, 211, 226 Heiskell, Joseph B., 325 Helena, Ark., 209 Hemlock Hollow, 157 Hen Island, 368 Henderson County, Tenn., 33–34, 53, 172, 192 Hendersonville, N.C., 256 Henry, Samuel S., 280 Henry County, Tenn., 53, 169 Hepburn, William P., 182 Heroes of America, 126 Hiawassee, Ga., 135 Hickman County, Tenn., 154 Hicks, Samuel, 220 Hill, Sara Jane, 66 Hillsville, Va., 351–52 Hilton Head, S.C., 208 Hines, Roger, 276 Hobson, Amson W., 268 Hoefling, Charles C., 295 Hog Mountain, 98 Holden, William W., 126 Holly Springs, Miss., 61, 174, 183–84 Holtsinger, John P., 73, 133, 363, 395 home guards, 149, 349, 363 home Yankees, 2 Hood, John B., 155, 232, 242, 259, 283, 289, 292, 306–10, 361, 377–78 Hooker, Joseph H., 117 Hopefield, Ark., 368 Hopson, John, 267 horses, cavalry: colors of, 59; diseases of, 292; forage for, 13, 130, 259, 349–350; impressment of, 13, 44, 69, 90, 93, 101, 141, 150, 160, 171, 176, 182, 213, 297, 320, 322, 344; individual ones, 156, 325; neglect of, 272; overworked, 193, 252, 260; shortage of, 143, 146, 265; starvation of, 238; mentioned, 116, 197 Hoskins, William A., 128 hospitals: field, 110–11; at Fort Pillow, 215; at Germantown, Tenn., 174; at Grand Junction, Tenn., 173–74; at Memphis, 174, 368; at Murfreesboro, Tenn., 77; at Nashville, 77; at Newnan, Ga., 257–58; mentioned, 298 houses: abandoned, 144; boarders at, 199; burn-

Index ing of, 106–7, 292; cavalry use of, 343, 361; as hospitals, 350; section, 199; typical, 153; mentioned, 144, 351 Houston, Miss., 187 Howard, Oliver O. , 117, 235 Howell’s Mill, 275 Hubbard, John Milton, 204, 216 Huddleston, Elam, 29–30, 140 Huddleston, Moses, 149 Hughs, John M., 28, 129, 138–40, 143–48, 158, 391 Hulas, John, 392 Hulas, William, 392 Humboldt, Tenn., 34, 64–65, 204 Humes, William, 254 Humphreys County, Tenn., 225 Hunter, Alexander, 212 Hunter, Charles H., 50 Huntingdon, Tenn., 53 Huntsville, Ala., 106, 281–82, 284 Hurak, Dick, 283 Hurlbut, Stephen A., 173, 176–77, 199, 208, 121, 214–16 Hurst, Elijah, 35 Hurst, Fielding: background of, 34–35; at Bolivar, Tenn., 198; duties of, 36–37; at Jackson, Tenn., 173, 178–79, 197; at Memphis, 198–99; in Middle Tenn., 293, 299; in north Miss., 52, 174–76; orders to, 196; at Purdy, Tenn., 196– 97; railroad guarded by, 167–68, 173; regiment raised by, 35–37, 52; and secession, 34–35; mentioned, 55, 197, 283 Hurst, Melooky, 35, 197 Hurst, Napoleon, 35 Hurst, William, 178 Hurt’s Corners, 294 Ihrie, George P., 65 Illinois troops: 2nd Cav., 213; 43rd Inf., 63–64; 61st Inf., 63–64; 106th Inf., 64–65; 129th Inf., 149; 8th Mtd. Inf., 174–75; 9th Mtd. Inf., 174–75 Indiana troops: 13th Art. (Nicklen’s battery), 320; 14th Art. 61; 18th Art., 90; 3rd Cav., 48; 4th Cav., 76; 8th Cav., 245; 9th Cav., 278, 280; 10th Cav., 280; 11th Cav., 295; 33rd Inf., 40; 49th Inf., 40; 52nd Inf., 213; 71st Inf., 81; 72nd Inf., 93; 73rd Inf., 98; 9th Mtd. Inf., 190 Indians: Cherokee, 132, 135; Chocktaw, 284; Creek, 247; western, 370 Ingersoll, Robert G., 61–63

433

Ingerton, William H., 191, 321, 324–35, 345 Ingerton, Mrs. William H., 323 intelligence: informants, 90, 327–28, 355; passive gathering of, 144; scouting for, 153, spying, 75–76, 120, 264 Iowa cavalry: 5th 245, 237, 250–51, 254; 8th, 133 irregular warfare, 6, 9–10, 32–33, 164, 385. See also bushwhackers; guerrilla warfare; and partisans Isbel, Howard, 260 Isbel, John, 260, Iuka, Miss., 363 Ivey Hill farm, 190–91, 321 Jackson, Andrew, 247, 364 Jackson, William H., 238 252, 292, 296 Jackson, Miss., 367 Jackson, Tenn., 38, 60–64, 67–68, 170–71, 173, 183, 197, 200, 205, 215, 379 Jackson County, Tenn., 27, 140, 152, 167–68 Jameson, G., 169 Jarvis, Joel W., 23 Jasper, Tenn., 266 Jefferson, Tenn., 57 Jefferson County, Tenn., 39 Jenkins, William, 391 Johnson, Adam R., 90, 246 Johnson, Andrew: as military governor, 2, 10–12, 30, 31, 37, 40, 47, 49–50, 54, 70, 129, 139, 149, 158, 225, 226, 260, 322, 323; and noncombatants, 154; mounted infantry created by, 150; recruits raised by, 44–45, 79; as senator, 22, 25; and state convention of 1865, 360; and Wilson, 298, 377 Johnson, Richard W., 298, 299, 304–5, 308–9, 311, 363 Johnson, Robert, 25–26, 49–52, 69–70, 72, 379 Johnson, William A., 274 Johnson County, Tenn., 125, 387 Johnsonville, Tenn., 155, 225, 289 Johnston, John, 179 Johnston, Joseph E. , 146, 148, 158, 231, 235–36 Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 224 Jomini, Antoine Henri, 67–68 Jones, Archer, 7, 33, 195 Jones, Fielder, 256 Jones, James, 271 Jones, Samuel, 123, 208 Jones, William E., 133 Jones County, Miss., 283–84 Jonesborough, Tenn., 124

434

Index

Jonesville, N.C., 351 Jordan, John M., 295 Kanawha Valley, 49 Kansas, 362 Kansas troops, 37 Kelley, David C., 282 Kelly, John H., 268–69, 275 Kenner, Christopher, 282 Kennesaw, Ga., 240 Kentucky troops (USA): 2nd Cav., 245; 12th Cav., 339; 13th Cav., 336; 4th Inf., 242; 12th Inf., 128; 4th Mtd. Inf., 242; 5th Mtd. Inf., 120; 52nd Mtd. Inf., 143 Kerner, Henry C., 78, 325 Kersey, Hiram T., 156–57 Killgore, J. W., 169 Kilpatrick, Hugh Judson, 231, 290 Kinderhook, Tenn., 46 King, John H., 238 King, William, 242 Kingsport, Tenn., 337, 345 Kingston, George S., 141 Kingston, Ga., 236 Kingston, Tenn., 122, 130, 159, 236 Kinman, Moses H., 393 Kirk, George W., 135–36, 336–37, 349, 351, 371 Kirk, Lewis, 371–72 Kneeland, Sam, 282 Knipe, Joseph F., 298, 304, 306, 308–9, 364 Knox County, Tenn., 39 Knoxville, Tenn.: Battle of, 128; convention at, 22; as Confederate base, 38–39, 40; and demobilization, 388; postwar, 392; raids in, 120, 335–37; under siege, 127; Union occupation of, 124–25, 231, 260–62 Kolb farm, 240 Kogier, Elijah, 27–28 Ku Klux Klan, 391 Lafayette, Ala., 251 Lafayette, Tenn., 159 LaGrange, Oscar H., 129, 131, 133, 234–35, 343 LaGrange, Tenn., 167, 174–75, 177, 182, 233–35 Lakeport, La., 365 Lannum, W. D., 204–5 Larkinsville, Ala., 107 Larson, James, 321 Latham, Ephraim, 107 Lathrop, William R., 276, 278–79

Lauderdale County, Ala., 168 Lauderdale County, Tenn., 211 LaVergne, Tenn., 57–59, 267, 271 Lawler, M. K., 171–72 Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 270–72, 275, 292 Leahy, James, 325, 328 Leaming, Mark, 212, 217, 220, 225 Lebanon, Ky., 50 Lebanon, Tenn., 31–32, 90, 156, 269 Ledford, John, 135 Lee, Robert E., 124, 180, 348, 363–64 Lee, William H. F., 180 Lee County, Va., 25 Leighton, Ala., 312 Lenoir, N.C., 359 Lenoir Station, Tenn., 120 Lester, David, 100–101 Lexington, Ga., 358 Lexington, Ky., 69 Lexington, Tenn., 33, 60–64, 67, 168 Liberty, 217–18 Liberty, Tenn., 31, 44, 90–94, 156–58, 264–65 Lick Creek, 24, 329 Lillard, William, 160 Lilly, Eli, 90, 92, 278–79 Limestone County, Ala., 168 Lincoln, Abraham, 27, 34–35, 49, 106, 291–92, 364 Lincoln County, Tenn., 147, 363, 369 Lincolnton, N.C., 354 Linden, Tenn., 172 Livermore, Thomas, 302 Livingston, Tenn., 143, 151 Loachapoka, Ala., 249–50 Lobelville, Tenn., 154 Logwood, Thomas H., 276 London, Ky., 51 Long, Eli, 94–96 Longstreet, James, 112, 117, 124, 126–27 Lookout Mountain, 109–12 Lookout Valley, 117 Loring, William W., 253 Lost Mountain, 231, 239 Lot, Warren, 108 Loudon, Tenn., 120 Louisville, Ky., 49–51, 69–70, 77, 87, 297 Lovejoy Station, Ga., 253 Lowrey, Mark P., 253 Lowry, William W., 388 Loyal League of America, 391

Index Lumpkin County, Ga., 160 Lynnville, Tenn., 292, 310, 312 Mackey, Robert R., 7, 10, 164 Maclin, Benjamin, 278, 361 Macon, Ga., 205, 207, 245, 252 Macon County, Tenn., 27, 149–50, 159 Madison County, Tenn., 172 Madisonville, Tenn., 163, 261 Mallaby, Theodore, 348–50 Manchester, Tenn., 95–96, 105 Marietta, Ga., 238–39, 252, 257 Marion, Va., 339–42, 345 Marion County, Tenn., 38, 161 Marshall, James, 215–17, 220–22 Marshall, N.C., 357 Martin, Frank, 66 Martin, James G., 355–57 Martin, James M., 168 Martin, William T., 112, 115–16, 131, 122 Maryville, Tenn., 38, 261, 391 Matthews, Stanley, 33 Maury County, Tenn., 46 Max Meadows, Va., 340, 351–52 Mayson’s Church, 243 McBath, William R., 188, 282, 313 McCann, Dick, 32, 76, 95 McClain, Francis M., 75–76 McClain, John, 75–76 McClellan, George B., 291, 321 McConnell, H. K., 141 McCook, Alexander, 56, 58 McCook, Edward M.: below Atlanta, 3, 231–44, 377, 380, 382; in East Tenn., 129–30, 33, 231; identified, 106; in Middle Tenn., 106–7, 129; in North Ala., 112; in North Ga., 110, 231–44; promoted, 110; mentioned, 259 McCook, Robert L., 63, 106 McCown, John P., 355 McCracken, Joseph, 206 McCree, James, 205 McCrillas, Lafayette, 174–76, 182, 184, 186, 194 McCulloch, John A., 74 McCulloch, Robert, 168, 188, 190, 216–17, 223 McDonald Station, Ala., 275 McDonough, James, 271 McDowell, Amanda, 262 McDowell, Lafayette, 139, 146 McGaughey, John, 162–63, 391–92 McGee, B. F., 92–93, 188, 194

435

McKee, Marion, 263 McLemore’s Cove, Ga., 162 McMillen, William L., 183–84 McMinn County, Tenn., 39, 79, 162–63 McMinnville, Tenn., 6, 33, 44, 71, 94–96, 106, 112, 114, 129, 138, 140, 147, 262–63, 269, 271, 299 McNairy County, Tenn., 13, 35–36, 172, 196, 371 McPherson, James B., 231–32, 236, 238, 240, 242 McTeer, Will A., 14, 26–27, 39, 74, 95 Mead, L. G., 370 Meek, John H., 36 Meigs County, Ohio, 121 Meigs County, Tenn., 39 Memphis Conference of the Methodist Church, 197 Memphis, Tenn.: and Santana, 368–69; and secession, 33; as U.S. military center, 177, 181, 209 Meridian, Miss., 181, 183, 283 Michigan troops: 2nd Cav., 110, 131, 241, 295; 3rd Cav., 173; 4th Cav., 59; 10th Cav., 327; 18th Inf., 274, 282; 1st Light Art., 246 Middleburg, Tenn., 168 Middleton, Tenn., 75, 104 Military Division of the Mississippi, 231 Mill Springs, Battle of, 27–28 Milledgeville, Ga., 358–59 Miller, John A., 79 Miller, John F., 46–47, 91 Miller, John K., 125, 137, 260, 272, 319, 322, 325– 33, 347–48, 354, 378, 396 Miller, Martin J., 251 mills: gristmills, 48, 90, 199, 274–75; textile, 95–96, 198, 350, 353 Milroy, Robert H., 158, 229, 262–63, 266, 268– 69, 271, 299–301, 304, 369 Milton, Tenn., 92 Minnis, John B., 194–95, 274–75, 278–79, 284 Minty, Robert H. G., 48, 59, 60, 71, 75, 92, 94– 95, 103–5, 116 Missionary Ridge, 111, 117 Mississippi cavalry (CSA): 5th, 306; 1st Partisans, 175 Missouri cavalry (USA), 4th, 190–91 Mitchell, J. B., 194 Mitchell, Robert B., 37, 103, 106, 110 Mitchell County, N.C., 126 Mobile, Ala., 25, 205, 223, 283, 359, 362, 364–65 Mocksville, N.C., 353

436

Index

Monroe, James, 90–91 Montague, Adolphus, 2 Montgomery, Ala., 205, 232, 245, 249–50 Monticello, Ky., 139 Moore, Franklin, 169 Mooresville, Ala., 46 Morgan, George W., 10, 14, 19, 25, 40–43, 49 Morgan, James D., 77, 209, 282–83 Morgan, John Hunt: assessment of, 7–8; and Bragg’s right flank, 92–96, 101, 380; death of, 325–27, 378, 382; in East Tenn., 260; 1862 raids by, 32, 43–44, 47–48, 51, 53, 56, 384; Ohio raid of, 121; mentioned, 345 Morgan, Lewis, 107 Morgan, Mattie Ready, 94–95 Morgan, Richard C., 337 Morgan County, Tenn., 41, 159 Morganton, N.C., 136, 354, 359 Morganton, Ga., 135 Morris, James H., 58 Morrison Station, Tenn., 96 Morristown, Tenn., 124, 324–25, 331–32, 348 Morton, John W., 275, 279, 284, 309 Moscow, Tenn., 177 Moss, Dave, 390 Mossy Creek, Tenn., 121, 131, 348 Moulton, Ala., 273, 276 Mount Airy, N.C., 351 Mount Airy, Va., 340, 345 Mount Carmel Church, 294 Mount Hope, Ala., 314 Mount Vernon, Ky., 120 Mount Vernon Academy, 262 mounted infantry: advantages of, 149, 165; assessment of, 163–64; in Cumberland Mountains and river valley, 150–59; along East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, 150, 157–59; fighting guerrillas in Ga., 150, 152–55; opposition to, 149–50, 165; purposes of, 149; along Tennessee River, 150, 152–55, 163; weaknesses of, 149, 165 Mulberry Gap, 133 mules: acquisition of, 96–97, 186; mounted, 96– 99; obstinacy of, 97; pack, 183, 186, 190, 348; patience of, 110; slaughtered, 113, 312; stampede of, 117–18 Munfordville, Ky., 70 Murfreesboro, Tenn., 31, 44, 46, 57–60, 69–76, 87–88, 90–91, 114, 266, 268, 271, 296, 299 Murphy, John, 47, 88, 91, 101, 152–55, 163 Murphy, John Harvey, 184

Murphy, N.C., 134–35 Murray, Eli H., 46 Murray, Thomas B., 114, 138, 143, 147, 158 Murray, William W., 207–8 Muscle Shoals, 291 Napier, Thomas, 32, 46 Nashville: Battle of, 304–8; and demobilization, 387–88; description of, 30, 82–83; occupation of, 9–10; as military base, 31–32, 69–70, 76–78, 192–94; pikes of, 303; state convention at, 360; and Thomas, 303–4; Wheeler as threat to, 259 Natchez, Miss., 362 Natchez Trace, 46 National Guard of Tennessee, 137 Nave, Henry, 371 Nave, Isaac, 371 Nave, Jacob, 371 Neely, James J., 198 Neely, John, 37 Negley, James A., 46, 48 Nelson, David M., 323, 334 Nelson, Thomas A. R., 323 Nelson, William, 31–32 New Albany, Miss., 168, 174–75, 184 New Era, 215, 218, 221–22, 224 New Hope Church, 238 New Jersey cavalry, 2nd, 183, 189 New Market, Tenn., 131 New Orleans, La., 364 New River, 344, 352 Newberry, Henry L., 47, 88–89 Newcomb, John, 77 Newman, Mrs. A. A., 173, 178 Newnan, Ga., 254–56 Newsom, John F., 168, 172–73 Newspapers, 126, 247, 264, 345 Nicholsville, Ky., 41, 51 Nicklen, Benjamin, 320 Nolensville, Tenn., 57, 70 North Carolina troops: 3rd Mtd. Inf. (USA), 135–36; N.C. Legion (CSA), 134–35; Osborne’s Scouts (CSA), 136 Northington, Samuel E., 321 Obeds River, 28 Obion County, Tenn., 53, 197–98, 392 Odlin, James H., 200–201 O’Hara, Captain, 61 Ohio troops: 3rd Cav., 91; 4th Cav., 91; 5th Cav.,

Index 61, 63; 7th Cav., 123; 9th Cav., 246, 250; 10th Cav., 132; 12th Cav., 151; 102nd Inf., 278 Okolona, Miss., 186–90, 194–95, 245, 384 Olive Branch, 218 Olmstead, Charles H., 232, 292, 309 Opelika, Ala., 245, 250–51 “ORA,” 115 Osborne, Thomas H., 136 outposts (USA): criticism of, 51, 179, 203–4, 209–10, 377; disadvantage of, 209–10, 226, 377; locations of, 51, 179, 203–4, 218; mission of, 6, 140, 226, 377 Overall Creek, 58, 300 Overton County, Tenn., 27, 152 Oxford, Miss., 185 pacification, means of: confiscation, 386; elections, 154, 161, 291, 386; extermination of guerrillas, 139, 144–46, 158–59, 167, 370–71; and hard-war policy, 31, 107, 383, 386; loyalty oaths, 107, 146–47, 154, 164, 172, 184, 261, 386; pardons, 347; provost law, 162–63, 386; reconciliation efforts, 102, 381; mentioned, 385 Paducah, Ky., 33, 53, 200, 208–9, 211, 214, 225 Paine, Eleazer A., 143, 151, 320 Painted Rock, N.C., 336–37 Palmer, John B., 331, 336–37, 355 Palmer, William J., 132–33, 313, 348, 351–52, 354, 357–58 Palmetto, Ga., 252, 254 Panther Springs, Tenn., 329 Paramore, James W., 91 Park, Josiah B., 95–96 Parker’s Crossroad, 67 Parkhurst, John G., 257 Parsons, Joseph H., 13, 121–22, 330–32 Parsons, Pleasant K., 34, 201, 208 partisans, 90, 169, 175, 246 Patrick County, Va., 352 Patterson, Michael L., 113–14 Patterson, Rufus, 350 Patterson, William J., 323, 330–32 Patterson’s Mills, 350 Patton, Samuel K. N., 129, 331–32 peddlers, 193, 259 Pennsylvania cavalry: 7th, 96, 104; 9th, 110–29, 132, 269–70; 15th, 48–49, 57, 132, 312; unidentified, 293 Pensacola, Fla., 365 Perkins, Captain, 191 Perry County, Tenn., 154, 172

437

Perryman, Alexander, 168 Petersburg, Va., 351 Phelps, S. L., 172 Phillips, John W., 155 Phillips, W. H., 265 Philpot’s Ferry, 256 Pickens, Samuel, 42, 49–50, 194 Pickens, William C., 24, 26, 38, 41–42, 49–50, 59, 382 Pickett’s Mill, 238 Pierce, Richard, 366–67 Pigg, James A., 279 pillaging and plundering: 115, 196, 379; causes of, 115, 196, 379; complaints about, 197–99, 357– 58; on large scale, 115, 197–98, 355, 359; as private action, 115, 339, 355, 357–59; prohibitions of, 176, 249 Pillow, Gideon J., 153, 170, 213 Pine Mountain, 239 Platt Valley, 223 Pocahontas, Tenn., 170, 173 Poe, Orlando M., 128 Polk, Leonidas, 35, 232 Polk, William H., 22 Polk County, Ga., 135 Pond Springs, Ala., 273 pontoon bridges, 294, 308–10, 312 Pontotac, Miss., 184, 191 Pooy, J. C., 314 Portland, Ohio, 43 post offices, 246–47, 351 Poston, John L., 211, 221, 225 Poston, Wiley G., 214 Potato Hill, 233–34 Potato Valley, 233 pranks and jokes, 73, 191–92, 239, 246–47, 253, 280, 303 Price, Sterling, 52 prisoners of war: activities of, 207–8, 283; condition of, 366–67; escape of, 107, 204, 207–8, 279–80; exchange of, 206–7, 367, 370; food of, 283; mistreatment of, 203–8, 258, 278; recruitment of, 206–7; treatment of each other, 206, 366 prisons: Andersonville, 206–7, 223, 367; Cahaba, 283, 366–67; Charleston, 207–8; Enterprise, 283; Libby, 100, 123; Macon, 107; Mobile 25, 205; Salisbury, 354; Tuscaloosa, 25 Prosser, William F., 186, 188, 260, 270–71, 272– 74, 277, 304, 312–14, 361, 390 prostitution, 76–77

438

Index

Pulaski, Tenn., 116, 225, 260, 270, 272, 274–76, 280–81, 284, 290–92, 310–11, 362, 366 Pumpkin Vine Creek, 238 Purdy, Tenn., 35, 178, 196–97 Putnam County, Tenn., 146, 152 Raccon Mountain, 117 Radford, P. M., 108–9 Radford’s plantation, 108–9 “Raiders,” 206 railroad lines: Atlanta & West Point, 252; Danville & Greensboro, 352; East Tennessee & Georgia, 122, 233; East Tennessee & Virginia, 23, 261, 348, 359, 388; Georgia, 242; Knoxville & Kentucky, 388; Louisville & Nashville, 32, 44, 51, 155, 272, 319, 321, 384; Macon & Western, 253; Memphis & Charleston, 6, 66–68, 117, 167– 68, 170–71, 173–75, 178, 199, 289, 376, 378; Mississippi & Tennessee Central, 167; Mobile & Ohio, 36–37, 66, 168, 181, 192, 200, 366; Montgomery & West Point, 245, 247, 249; Nashville & Chattanooga, 6, 69, 147–48, 260– 62, 265, 269, 271–72, 281, 284, 377; Nashville & Decatur, 6, 267, 273–74, 276, 281, 292; Nashville & Northwestern, 6, 66, 80, 83, 154–55, 194, 225, 305, 319; North Carolina Central, 352; Southwestern & Georgia, 205; Virginia & East Tennessee, 339, 345, 352; Western & Atlantic, 232, 242. See also railroads railroads: construction of, 66, 80–81; destruction of, 66–67, 112, 115, 186, 192, 250–51, 259, 262, 266, 344–45, 359; failure to repair, 66, 179; laborers for, 384; logistic value of, 259, 384; military control of, 232; protection of, 231– 32, 380, 383–84; raids against, 60–68, 96– 100, 245–285, 340, 344, 351, 354; repair of, 106, 118, 199, 170–71. See also railroad lines Raleigh, N.C., 353 Raleigh, Tenn., 169 Ramsey, James G. M., 120–21, 347 Ray, Daniel M., 24, 41, 76, 94, 181–82, 382 Read, Jane, 34 Readyville, Tenn., 114, 269 recruiting: competition in, 125; by Confederates, 138–39, 147, 153, 168–70, 177, 196; of deserters, 107–8, 125; encouraging factors, 67–68, 225; locations of, 1–2, 107–8, 122, 200; means of, 1, 12, 107–9, 122, 136, 139, 375; in North, 79, 81; of prisoners, 81, 206–7

recruits (USA): competition for, 49–52, 125; deserters among, 107–9; locations of, 38, 108–9, 124, 160, 319, 375; 16, 23, 34, 37, 54; motives of, 37, 38, 108–9, 126, 160, 198–99, 225, 263, 375; nature of, 126, 127, 375; prisoners among, 108, 127, 206–7 Red Clay, Tenn., 233 Reed, James, 141 Reeves, Felix A., 128 Reeves, Thomas H., 336–37 Refugee House, 194 refugees, pro-Union: from Ala., 375; from Ga., 160; from Tenn., 23–26, 33, 42, 49, 144, 375; from N.C., 354, 375; from Va., 344 Regulators, 206 religion: lack of, 74; private practice of, 74; public practice of, 73–74 Republic of Jones, 283–84 Resaca, Ga., 162, 235–36 Revelle, Cordy B., 211 Revis, James W., 159 Reynolds, Alexander W., 358 Reynolds, William B., 26 Reynoldsbury, Tenn., 80 Rice, Lieutenant, 348–50 Richards, Isham, 143 Richardson, Robert V., 168–69, 171–72, 174–77 Richman, William O., 370 Richmond, Ky., 121 Richmond, Va., 351, 364 Ridge, George, 79–80 Ridge, James, 79–80 Ridge, Jasper, 79 Ridge, William, 79–80 Ringgold, Ga., 162 Ripley, Miss., 52 Ripley, Tenn., 159 Roach, A. C., 98 Roach, Harve, 34 Roane County, Tenn., 50, 162 Robertson, Felix H., 262, 265, 268–69, 271 Robinson, John, 193 Robinson, William H., 322 Robinson, Wingate T., 45 Rock Mills, Ala., 257 Rockford, N.C., 351 Rocky Face Ridge, 235 Roddey, Philip D., 97, 254, 259, 270, 272–74 Rodgers, John B., 29 Rogers, John A., 37–38, 53, 60, 63, 65

Index Rogersville, Ala., 116, 274–75 Rogersville, Tenn., 123, 270, 324–25, 336–37 Rome, Ga., 96, 100, 109–10 Rome, Tenn., 93, 99, 263 Rosecrans, William S.: at Chickamauga, 110–111; and his command, 48; at Murfreesboro, 56– 60, 69, 72, 75, 90–91; and Tullahoma Campaign, 105; mentioned, 108–10 Rosegarden, Adolph G., 57 Ross, Lawrence S. “Sul,” 239, 253, 255 Round Mountain Iron Furnace, 99 Rousseau, Lovell H.: on Ala. raid, 3, 231, 245– 51, 380, 382; background of, 245; opposing Forrest, 281–82, 284, 299; opposing Wheeler, 266–270; mentioned, 139 Rover, Tenn., 103 Royal, Elbert M., 201, 208 Rucker, Edmund, 305, 307–8, 314 Russell, Alfred A., 62, 64, 313–14 Russell, Milton, 99 Russell County, Va., 336 Russellville, Tenn., 321, 329, 331–32 Rutherford Station, Tenn., 176–77 Rutherfordton, N.C., 355 Rutledge, Tenn., 371 saber brigade, 103 sabers: charges of, 5, 71–72, 114, 166, 131–32, 191, 267, 270, 313; use of, encouraged, 5 Sale Creek, 25 Salem, Miss., 174–75 Salem, N.C., 352 Salem Cemetery, 60 Saline, Ill., 33 Salisbury, N.C., 348, 352, 354 Saltville, Va., 158, 329, 336–45 Samuels, Della, 193 Sand Mountain, 97, 107, 110, 246 Sanders’s raid, 120–21 Sanders, William P., 120–21, 127 Sanitary Commission, 368 Sansom, Emma, 99 Saulsbury, Tenn., 68, 167–68 Savannah, Ga., 35 Savannah, Tenn., 182 Sawyer, John M., 123–24 Schofield, John M., 135–36, 231–32, 238, 291–95, 297, 301, 345 Scott, John S., 121 Scott, Samuel W., 323

439

Scott’s raid, 121 Scottsboro, Ala., 107 Scottsville, Ky., 139 Scully, James W., 81, 323 secession: in East Tenn., 21–22; in Middle Tenn., 27; in West Tenn., 34–35 Seddon, James A., 100 Selma, Ala., 366 Sevier County, Tenn., 38–39, 74 Sevierville, Tenn., 49, 133 Shackelford, James M., 121, 124 sharpshooters, 65–66, 99, 201, 214, 218, 224, 239, 271, 291, 339 Shaw, W. J., 216 Sheaver, Orlando H., 309–10 Shelbyville, Tenn.: Battle of, 104–5; and guerrillas, 158; occupation of, 105, 379; recruits from, 139; Wheeler’s raids on, 115, 268–69; mentioned, 31, 87, 100, 156, 293 Shell, Robert, 340 Shelley, James T., 183 Shelton, George W., 153 Shepherdsville, Ky., 51 Shepley, George F., 218 Sherman, William T.: and Atlanta Campaign, 203, 231–32, 240, 242; and East Tenn., 24; and Meridian Campaign, 181–82, 194–95; orders for Tories, 272, 357; quoted, 7, 165, 179, 181, 226, 232; Wilson appointed cavalry chief by, 289; mentioned, 179, 187, 272, 290, 301, 348, 386 Sherrod, Daniella Jones, 117 Shoal Creek, 209, 274, 283, 290–92 Short Mountain, 156–57 Shorter, John G., 100 Shrader, Samuel, 128 Signal Corps, 348–49 Six Mile, Tenn., 134 Skagg, Benjamin F., 43 Sleeth, Addison, 213 Sloan, William E., 256 Slovis, Colonel, 175 Smith, Andrew J., 304–5 Smith, D. D., 96–97 Smith, D. Howard, 327 Smith, Daniel, 157 Smith, Edmund Kirby, 40 Smith, Elza C., 336 Smith, Major, 330–31 Smith, Pleasant C., 256

440

Index

Smith, Thomas A., 34, 203 Smith, Thomas G., 53 Smith, William J., 52, 67, 362, 389, 393 Smith, William Sooy, 14, 33, 143–44, 179, 181–95, 212, 272, 382 Smith County, Tenn., 27, 138, 156, 263 Smithville, Tenn., 93, 101, 156 Smoot, Gideon S., 136 Smyrna, Tenn., 266 Snake Creek Gap, 235 Snelling, David R., 100–101 Sniprig, Y. C., 42 Snows Hill, 6, 93 Soap Creek, 240 Somerset, Ky., 50 Somerville, Tenn., 177 Southern Claims Commission, 394 Southern Loyalists Convention, 390 South Tunnel, 321 Spalding, George, 3, 77, 260, 268–69, 274–76, 280–81, 284, 298–99, 304, 314, 390 Spanish Fort, 365 Sparta, Tenn., 33, 44, 95, 129–30, 139–40, 143– 44, 147, 150, 159, 262, 265, 269, 312, 323 Spears, James G., 40–41 Spencer, Cornelia Phillips, 357 Spencer, Tenn., 157 Spring Creek, Tenn., 46, 64 Spring Hill, Tenn., 281, 284, 294, 301, 309–10 Sproul, John, 28 Sproul, Mary Catherine, 142, 265 St. Cecelia Convent, 76 staff disputes, 47, 53–54, 82, 88–89, 139, 203, 213–14, 277, 370 Stacy, Brazilliah P., 126, 335, 345, 358 stampedes: at Bulls Gap, 332–33; at Fort Pillow, 221–22; at Okolona, 188–89; at Shelbyville, 105; at Stones River, 58 Stanley, David S.: cavalry of, 48–49, 109–10; at Huntsville, Ala., 106; as infantry general, 135, 295, 301, 349; in North Ga., 109–110; orders of, 14, 104, 106–7; at Stones River, 56–60; mentioned, 91, 96, 183 Stansbury, Soloman, 160–61 Stanton, Edwin M., 37, 77, 79, 100, 150, 387 Stanton Depot, Tenn., 172 Stantonville, Tenn., 36 Starkweather, John C., 275, 280 Starnes, James W., 64 Starr, Stephen Z., 69 State Line, Tenn., 201

Statesville, N.C., 354 Steedman, James B., 70–72, 161, 260–61, 267– 68, 296, 314 Steele, Frederick, 365 Stephens, Alexander H., 358 Stephens, Meshack, 3, 41, 51, 231 Stevenson, Ala., 106–7 Stewart, F. M., 170 Stewart, Robert R., 296 Stewart’s Creek, 57 Stokes, William B.: at Carthage, Tenn., 146–47, 264, 369; command problems of, 47, 88–89, 101; as congressman, 375, 394; in early skirmishing, 45–48; on raid in North Ga., 93–94; regiment raised by, 31, 44–45; regiment united by, 138–39; and secession, 30–31; at Sparta, Tenn., 3, 143–46 Stoneman, George, 3, 6, 163, 235, 251, 290, 317, 335–45, 354, 372, 378 Story, William P., 299, 304–5 Stout, Harry S., 179 stragglers, 58, 93, 153, 190 strategy: and cavalry, 11, 306, 315; decisive battle, 5; defensive offense, 232–33; defined, 4; of destruction, 14, 94, 179, 195; enclave, 5; and hard-war policy, 14, 101–2, 179, 386; and logistics, 33; raiding, 67–68, 101–2, 120–21, 195; and terrain, 54; mentioned, 97 Strawberry Plains, Tenn., 121, 126, 131, 261, 326, 332 Streight, Abel D., 6, 96–100 Streight’s raid, 6, 96–100 Strickland, Jesse H., 121–22, 124, 137, 379 Strickland, William F., 121–22 Stuart, Iley, 160–61 Sugar Creek, 291, 311 Sugar Valley, Ga., 235 Sullivan, Jeremiah C., 60–61, 63–64 Sullivan County, Tenn., 38, 387 Sulphur Branch trestle, 8, 270, 274–75, 280, 282, 284, 382 Sultana, 367–69, 395 Summerville, Ga., 110 Summit, Ala., 246 Swannanoe Gap, 355 Sweetwater, Tenn., 391 tactics: assault, 219–21, 342; ; and cavalry, 11, 98, 191; countercharge, 311; deception, 61, 202, 277, 338; defensive, 232–33; definition of, 4; disguise, 157, 263; diversionary, 103–4; hit and

Index run, 294, 301; “hollow square” offense, 190; mounted and dismounted, 116; sharpshooters, 218; of troop rotation, 98 Talbott’s Station, Tenn., 131 Talladega, Ala., 249 Tanley, John, 193 Taylor, Campbell, 134–35 Taylor, David H., 224 Taylor, James, 206 Taylor, Richard, 274, 366 Taylorsville, Va., 352 telegraph: messages, 61, 200; offices, 338; operators, 338; train, 365; wires, 120, 266 Temperance Hall, Tenn., 94 Temple, Oliver P., 395–96 Tennessee Barracks (Nashville), 225 Tennessee legislature, 1, 389 Tennessee state asylum, 59 Tennessee troops (CSA): 2nd Cav., 217; 5th Cav.; 256; 7th Cav., 2, 201, 223; 8th Cav., 144, 262; 12th Cav., 172; 13th Cav., 159; 15th Cav., 276; 20th Cav., 221; 21st Cav., 222; 24th Cav., 222; 16th Inf., 156; 22nd Inf., 138, 170; 25th Inf., 138–39; 27th Inf., 172; 33rd, 109; 52nd Inf., 35; Morton’s Battery, 275, 279, 284, 309 Tennessee troops (USA), artillery: 1st, 360; 1st Light, 323 Tennessee troops (USA), cavalry —1st Tenn.: in Cumberlands, 129–30; defending railroad, 266–68, 270, 281; in East Tenn., 129–33; on McCook’s raid, 252–58; movement toward Chattanooga, 103–4, 106, 110–11; movement from Ky. to Tenn., 69–70; at Nashville, 363–64; and Nashville Campaign, 290– 92, 295–96, 305–6, 310; in North Ga., 233, 235–44; origins of, 25–26, 41; pursuing Wheeler, 116; recruits of, 49–52, 75; training of, 50–51; near Triune, 71–74, 103 —2nd Tenn.: at Crawfish Springs, 110–11; out of Decatur, Ala., 270, 272–74, 276–77, 282–83; at Gravelly Springs, Ala., 362; at McMinnville, 114–15; to Memphis, 181–82; out of Murfreesboro, 60–63, 76–77; at Nashville, 192– 94; and Nashville Campaign, 296–98; and New Orleans, 364; origins of, 41; recruits of, 49; on Smith’s raid, 184, 186–90; at Stones River, 58, 60; at Vicksburg, 364 —3rd Tenn.: out of Decatur, Ala., 270, 272–75, 278–80; out of Murfreesboro, 74–76, 94–96; to Memphis, 181–82; at Nashville, 76–77; out of Nashville, 192–94; officers of, 39; origins

441

of, 42; as prisoners of war, 283, 366–67; on Smith’s raid, 184–85, 190–92; at Stones River, 59–60; on Sultana, 367–68 —4th Tenn.: out of Decatur, Ala., 260, 281; in eastern Ky., 42–43; from Ky. to Tenn., 57; on McCook’s raid, 254, 256–57; to Memphis, 181–82; at Mobile, 365–66; at Nashville, 71, 77–79, 192–94; and Nashville Campaign, 293, 297, 308, 311–12; at New Orleans, 364; origins of, 38, 40–42; recruits of, 50–53; on Rousseau’s raid, 245–51; on Smith’s raid, 183–86, 189, 192; to Baton Rouge, 366 —5th Tenn.: to Chattanooga, 104–6, 117–18; in Cumberlands, 3, 139, 143–47; defending Nashville, 46–48; in Middle Tenn., 369–70; east of Murfreesboro, 3, 6, 88–95, 101; mounting of, 45; and Nashville Campaign, 299– 300; origins of, 31; recruits of, 44–45; staff disputes, 47, 88–89, 101; at Stones River, 60; on Streight’s raid, 96–101; out of Tullahoma, Ala., 3, 147, 260, 262–63, 266, 369–70 —6th Tenn.: from Bolivar to Memphis, 198; at Corinth, Miss., 52; and enemy recruiting, 178– 79; equipped, 36; and Forrest’s 1862 raid, 60– 61, 66–68; guarding railroad, 167–68, 174–76; in Middle Tenn., 362–63; and Nashville Campaign, 293, 304, 309–10; origins of, 34–37; and Purdy, Tenn., 196–97; recruits of, 168; raid on Linden, Tenn., 172; scouting, 167, 170– 73; training of, 36–37 —7th Tenn.: origins of, 33–34; at Lexington, Tenn., 61, 64; as prisoners of war, 204–8; remnants of, 168, 208–9; at Trenton, Tenn., 52, 63, 65–66; at Union City, Tenn., 199–204 —8th Tenn.: in East Tennessee Campaign, 124; at Gallatin, Tenn., 265, 320; origins of, 122; recruits of, 129; in southwestern Va., 342; in upper East Tenn., 347, 371; mentioned, 13, 159 —9th Tenn.: in East Tenn. Campaign, 124, 128– 29; origins of, 122; recruits of, 122, 124; in southwestern Va., 342; in upper East Tenn., 347, 371; mentioned, 13, 159 —10th Tenn.: at Eastport, Miss., 363 and Nashville Campaign, 293, 296; and Northwestern R.R., 80–81; origins of, 79; out of Pulaski, Tenn., 274, 280–82, 292–93; recruits of, 79–80 —11th Tenn.: at Cumberland Gap, 371; in East Tenn. Campaign, 124; origins of, 122 —12th Tenn.: at Eastport, Miss., 363; and Nashville Campaign, 3, 295, 307–8, 312, 314; and

442

Index

Tennessee troops (USA), cavalry (continued) Northwestern R.R., 80–81; origins of, 79; out of Pulaski, Tenn., 274–75, 280–81; recruits of, 79–80; in West, 370; and Wheeler’s last raid, 268 —13th Tenn.: in east Ga., 358; in East Tenn. Campaign, 126–27; at Gallatin, Tenn., 320–23; at Nashville, 319; origins of, 125; recruits of, 125– 26; in southwestern Va., 8, 339–43; in upper East Tenn., 324–29; —14th Tenn. (Bradford’s Battalion): Company A of, reorganized, 225–26; dead and wounded, 222–26; at Fort Pillow, 213–15, 221–22, 224, 226–27; origins of, 211–13; as prisoners of war, 223 —Ala. and Tenn. Vedette Cav., 107–9, 149 Tennessee troops (USA), infantry: 1st, 23, 120– 21; 2nd, 23, 25, 120–23, 125, 336–37; 3rd, 236; 4th (Patterson), 113–14, 125, 336–37; 5th, 183, 236; 6th, 59, 155; 7th East Tenn., 25; 7th (Rogers), 37, 64–65, 168; 8th, 128; 10th, 72, 80–81, 83; 11th, 143 Tennessee troops (USA), mounted infantry: 1st, 150–52; 2nd, 152–55; 3rd, 159; 4th, 155–59; 5th, 159–62; 6th, 161–62; 7th, 162–63; 8th, 152 Texas cavalry (CSA): 35th, 255; 8th, 271; 9th, 222, 243; 27th, 255; Rangers, 9, 58, 94, 145, 147 Thomas, George H.: in Atlanta Campaign, 231– 32, 238, 240, 257; in Ky., 11, 24; at Nashville, 289–90, 296, 303, 308–9, 315; at Stones River, 56; in Tullahoma Campaign, 108; mentioned, 139, 322–23, 348, 371, 386 Thomas, William H., 134–35 Thompson, Robert M., 393 Thompson, Sarah, 26, 328 Thompson, Sylvanius H., 26 Thompson’s Station, Tenn., 267 Thornburgh, Della, 193 Thornburgh, Duff G., 193, 245 Thornburgh, Jacob M., 12, 41, 51, 78, 82, 114–15, 181, 185, 189, 192–93, 245, 274, 299, 365, 390 Thornburgh, John W., 23, 390 Thornburgh, Russell, 23 Tifton, Ga., 260 Tillson, Davis, 261, 324, 335, 349, 351, 371 Tilton, Ga., 235 Tipton, Stephen T., 108, 211 Tories. See unionists; and specific U.S. Army regiments of southern states Tracy, William R., 70, 73–74

Tracy City, Tenn., 108, 138, 147, 157, 265, 271 Trenton, Tenn., 36, 38, 52–53, 60, 63, 65, 68, 200, 202, 204 Triune, Tenn., 71–73, 268, 271, 295 Trotter family, 77 Troy, Tenn., 52–53 truces: at Athens, Ala., 277; at Columbia, Tenn., 310; Forrest-Streight, 100; at Fort Pillow, 219–20; at Union City, Tenn., 202; of winter (1862), 28 Tucker, Francis, 209 Tullahoma, Tenn., 33, 69, 87, 105, 147, 260, 262, 266, 269, 271, 281, 284, 299, 369, 379 Tunnel Hill, 235, 260 Tupelo, Miss., 205 Tuscaloosa, Ala., 25 Tuscumbia, Ala., 97, 270, 289 Tuskegee, Ala., 249–50 Twiggs, William, 160–61 Underwood, Eli, 330 Union City, Tenn., 8, 53, 66, 168, 178, 182, 197, 199–203, 213 Union County, Ga., 160 Union County, Tenn., 23 Union Guard, 150 Union Lead Mines Company, 340 unionists, 97, 118, 121, 134–35, 161, 349 Unionville, Tenn., 75 University of Alabama Cadet Corps, 250 U.S. troops (regulars): 4th Cav., 47, 91, 104, 189, 309, 32; 1st Colored Heavy Art., 349; 6th Colored Heavy Art., 214; 106th Colored Inf., 276; 110th Colored Inf., 276; 111th Colored Inf., 276; 2nd Colored Light Art., 212 U.S.S. Champion, 172 U.S.S. Silver Cloud, 223 Vale, Joseph G., 96 Van Buren County, Tenn., 144 Van Cleve, Horatio P., 266 Van Dorn, Earl, 52, 71 Vanatta, John, 157 Vance, Robert B., 132 Vance, Zebulon B., 132 Varnell’s Station, Ga., 231 Vaughn, John C., 134, 269, 324, 328–31, 337–43, 345, 352 Veatch, James C., 203 veterans, Confederate: persecution by, 392–93; persecution of, 391–92

Index veterans, Union: appointments for, 390; associations of, 391, 395; claims by, 394–95; cemeteries for, 395; elections of, 389–90; homes for, 395; lawsuits of, 392; maturity of, 395–96; pensions for, 393–94; persecution by, 391–92; politics of, 390–91; prejudice of, 388, 391; pride of, 395; redemption of, 393; residence of, 389; returning home, 387–89 Vicksburg, Miss., 80, 170, 181, 364, 367 Vining Station, Ga., 242 Wade, Congressman Benjamin F., 224 Wade, Sgt. Benjamin F., 367 Wagner, Frederick, 279 Wagner, Joseph H., 330, 337, 339 wagon trains: capture of, 253, 305, 351, 132; destruction of, 57, 112–13, 252, 312–13; drivers of, 113; escorts of, 59, 113, 342; significance of, 112, 232, 252, 295, 309; mentioned, 112 Walden’s Ridge, 112–13 Walker, James, 372 Walker, Joshua H., 334 Wallace, John J., 207 Wallace, Theophilus F., 312 Walnut Grove Baptist Church, 176 Walthall, Edward C., 309–10 Walton, Thomas, 355 War Department: Confederate, 170, 326; Union, 69, 106 Ward, Edward, 283 Ward, Frank B., 57 Waring, George E., 182–83, 185, 189, 199 Warren, Stanford L., 34–35, 393 Warren County, Tenn., 94, 138 Warrenburg, Tenn., 330 Warrior, 365 Wartburg, Tenn., 120 Wartrace, Tenn., 87, 115 Washington, Ga., 358 Washington County, Tenn., 387 Washington Peace Conference, 34 Watauga Gap, 351 Waterloo, Ala., 154 Waters, Shelah, 143, 148, 266–63, 271 Waters, Thomas, 90–91, 101 Watkins, Louis D., 233 Wauhatchie, Tenn., 117 Wayne County, Tenn., 32–33, 153 Waynesboro, Tenn., 290, 292–93 Weakley County, Tenn., 33, 53, 204 Webster, Joseph D., 272

443

Wedowee, Ala., 257 West Point, Ga., 251 West Point, Miss., 186 West Point, Ohio, 121 Wharton, Capt. John, 178 Wharton, Gen. John A., 56–59, 94, 112–14, 115–16 Wheeler, James T., 281 Wheeler, Joseph: assessment of, 7–8, 271; in East Tenn., 127, 129, 261–62; in Ga., 234, 252; guarding Bragg’s right flank, 71; return to Tenn., 158, 259–61, 266–67, 271, 376; and Sequatchie Valley raid, 112–13, 116; at Shelbyville, 104–5; at Stones River, 56–59; mentioned, 29, 274, 284, 373 Wheeler, Mrs. Joseph, 117 Whig Party, 35 Whitaker, Walter C., 105 White, Raleigh, 275–76 White County, Tenn., 27, 32, 139, 142, 144, 152, 159 White Station, Tenn., 209 Whiteburg, Tenn., 331 Whiteville, Tenn., 172, 198 Whitsitt, William, 269 Wilcos, Christopher C., 328 Wilder, John Thomas, 90, 93–94, 106, 116 Wiley, Moses, 241, 253 Wilkesboro, N.C., 350–51 Wilkinson, Mrs. James W., 358 Wilkinson’s Crossroads, 57 Williams, Catherine, 326 Williams, John S., 122–23, 158, 261–62, 265, 268–70 Williams, Lucy, 326 Williams, Stokely, 131 Williamson, Alice, 320 Williamson, John C., 260 Williamson County, Tenn., 153 Willich, August, 57 Wilson, Adam, 184–85 Wilson, James Harrison: appointed by Sherman, 289–90; as chief of Cavalry Bureau, 150; at Gravelly Springs, Ala., 361–63; at Nashville, 155, 297–99, 303; pursuing Hood’s army, 304, 306–12; and reorganization of cavalry, 11, 290–91, 293; takes field command, 293–97 Wilson, William T., 37 Wilson County, Tenn., 138, 159 Winchester, Tenn., 106, 117, 129 Windall, William, 142

444

Index

winter quarters, 111, 128, 213, 361–62, 369, 378 Wirz, Henry, 206 Witcher, Vincent A., 336 Witherspoon, William, 198, 201, 216 Witt, William, 161 Wolf River, 169 Wolverton, James T., 369 women: as camp followers, 83, 355; as contraband, 89; as diarists, 278, 320; as foragers, 355; as guides, 26, 42; on home front, 275, 347; as informants, 99; men disguised as, 184, 237; as mill workers, 95, 351; reaction of, to foraging, 358; as refugees, 347; as soldiers, 60, 313; treatment of soldiers, 188, 213; as unionists, 326; as victims, 161, 265; as wives of U.S. officers, 217

Woodbury, Tenn., 114, 269 Wortham, James, 155, 158, 268–69, 375 Wright, Horatio G., 51 Wyatt, James B., 322, 339 Wyatte, Miss., 176, 184 Wytheville, Va., 339–40, 345–46, 352 Yankeetown, Tenn., 129–30 Young, Isham, 122 Young, John T., 223 Youngville, Tenn., 249 Zachary, Allan, 140 Zachary, Peter, 140 Zahm, Lewis, 48, 56–58, 60 Zollicoffer, Tenn., 338