The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (26 page)

In fact, it was not much of a battle. The Federals behaved badly, many retiring without a fight, and Moore himself later resigned rather than be cashiered. But the Confederates did not know that now, and they reveled in their victory. The men roamed the enemy camps, looting joyously. Jasper “Jap” Anderson of Company B, 9th Kentucky, found a mule and commenced loading it with blankets, thirty pounds of coffee, and a dozen or so canteens filled with apple brandy. Johnny Green rushed into Colonel Moore’s tent, donned the officer’s overcoat, and was in the act of removing some flannel shirts from a valise when the colonel entered.

“My good fellow, don’t take my clothes,” said the mortified Moore. Green gave him the shirts but refused to hand over the coat. They would keep the colonel warm in prison, he said.

“Do give me my over coat & get the Major’s in the next tent; he was killed in the fight.” Johnny would not.

“You may have the Major’s,” he said, “I’ll keep this.”

The victory did not come without a cost, however. Hewitt lost sixty-five killed, wounded, or missing, most of them falling when he mistakenly halted the regiment under fire. Morehead took eighteen casualties, and Cobb ten. In all, the Orphans lost ninety-three of their number, and now the surgeon and nurses roamed the field looking for them. With other enemy garrisons within supporting distance of Moore, Morgan could not afford to wait. He would have to leave those too injured to walk or ride behind. Dr. John O. Scott, surgeon of the 2d Kentucky, stayed with them. He gathered the injured. On the field they found the mangled remains of poor gunner Watts, recognizable only by his bloody artillery cap. Nearby lay Lieutenant Charles Thomas of the 2d, blood spurting from an open wound in his chest, and dead alongside him was Lieutenant John Rogers of his same company. W. E. Etheridge, who that morning jokingly asked comrades to write to his lady fair should he die, now lay dead.

Scott commandeered a wagon belonging to some blacks and with it transported most of the wounded to the nearby house of a Mrs. Halliburton. Soon Morgan and Hunt left to return to Murfreesboro, and Scott and his wounded Orphans were on their own. It was not long before federal cavalry rode into Hartsville and took possession of the now empty battlefield. Many of the bluecoats turned out to be Kentucky cavalry, and when Scott was escorted to their commander, he saw Colonel John Harlan. “How are you, John?” one Orphan shouted as he recognized an old friend. “As soon as that social bombshell was exploded,” wrote Surgeon Scott, “all soon recognized each other and there was a general shaking of hands and greeting of friends.” Harlan and his men and officers visited the wounded at Mrs. Halliburton’s and vied fiercely with each other in acts of kindness and cheer. “It was a grand sight to see the man in the blue in all kindness and affection,” wrote Scott, “assisting his brother of the gray.” Harlan himself ordered coffee and rations for the Confederate wounded. For a time they became his Orphans, too. Once they were turned over to federal surgeons, the colonel allowed Dr. Scott and his nurses to return to Murfreesboro.
²⁵

The next two weeks passed in relative quiet for the Army at Murfreesboro, but not for the Orphan Brigade; for now it appeared that Braxton Bragg was ready to make open warfare against the Kentuckians. Four years later Basil Duke would write of Bragg, “The
wrongs he did Kentucky and Kentuckians, the malignity with which he bore down on his Kentucky troops, his hatred and bitter active antagonism to all prominent Kentucky officers, have made an abhorrence of him part of a Kentuckian’s creed.” The seeds of Bragg’s antipathy for Kentuckians went to his failed campaign, the fact that men of the state did not flock to his banner, nor even support him by providing supplies. Further, the failure of Breckinridge and the Orphans to join him enraged his already paranoid mind against all men of the Blue-grass. It did not help that the Kentuckians also enjoyed an unusual influence in the capital, and with the Kentucky-born President Davis. It was time they were put in their place.

He started by ordering conscript officers to treat Kentucky men in exile in the South the same as anyone else liable to the draft. To this Breckinridge objected strongly, and it was even rumored that “Old Breck,” Hanson, and Buckner threatened to resign in protest. That is questionable, but certainly it made Bragg the enemy of all Kentuckians. “The Kentucky vanity is as irritable, although not as radical, as the Virginian,” Duke would say, “and sees a slight in every thing short of a caress.” Bragg hardly caressed them.

Into the middle of this situation stepped Mr. Thomas Estes, formerly a private in Helm’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry. Now he spent his time hunting deserters and returning them for a bounty. On December 8 he received ninety dollars for bringing three men from the 6th Kentucky, Company E, back to the Army. Two of them were Frank Driscoll and James Gillock. The third was Private Asa Lewis.

On December 20, 1862, a general court-martial sat to try Lewis and several others in the Army on charges of desertion. The indictment was read, violation of the Twentieth Article of War, to which Lewis then pled not guilty. As his story unfolded, it appeared that he enlisted originally for only twelve months, and did not feel that the reorganization of his regiment for three years or the war bound those who did not individually re-enlist. He did not. Further, his father now lay dead and his mother, Sallie, and three children needed him as their only means of support. Apparently he requested a furlough to go home and lay in a crop for them, but it was denied, and finally he told his friends in the company that he would go anyhow, and return to his place when he provided sufficiently for his family. Johnny Green believed that Lewis had actually deserted for this purpose once before, being brought back and let go with a reprimand. It would not be so now.

Despite representation by good counsel, Lewis heard the court find him guilty as charged. The sentence was death. When the court passed their findings to Bragg, he approved the sentence. “The said Asa Lewis,” he said, “will be executed by shooting in the presence of the troops of the Brigade to which he belongs.” Bragg set the date for December 26, between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, and ordered that Hanson direct the proceedings.
²⁶

Now the Kentucky officers began a campaign to get Lewis’ sentence commuted. They pled with Bragg to relent, but to no avail. Most of the Kentucky officers signed a petition that they delivered to the commanding general on Christmas, begging that he reconsider. Breckinridge personally visited Bragg, who now despised him, but the general would not move. Kentucky blood was “too feverish for the health of the Army,” Bragg reportedly said. He was sick of the Kentuckians’ grumbling and troublemaking. He would put a stop to it if he had to execute every Orphan in the brigade. Obviously he sought to make Asa Lewis an object lesson, a test of his strength of will over the Kentuckians whom he thought sought to bring him to ruin. Breckinridge became furious. Kentuckians were not slaves, and Bragg would not treat them as such. Shooting Lewis would be murder. Bragg stood firm.
²⁷

Christmas came and despite Lewis’ predicament, most of the Orphans enjoyed it as they could. “Christmas day was a real Christmas,” wrote Grainger. Several boxes of good things from Kentucky arrived through the lines. Johnny Green’s mess obtained eggs and onions, and even a goose, buying them for a change, and Johnny himself baked a pound cake which, though it fell in the center, did not dampen their spirits. Some of the captured Hartsville brandy enlivened the holiday for them as well. Squire Helm Bush, of Company B, 6th Kentucky, saw that several men of his company “got a little funny & enjoyed themselves,” many staying the night at a ball in Murfreesboro.

And the mysterious scribe of Company C, 4th Kentucky, once again took a pen to the company’s clothing account book. “December the 25th 1862,” he wrote. “Another Christmas has come and still we are engaged in the Bloody Struggle to be free … for more than two years we have been combating with the Vandal horde—to Day our army is stronger and more thoughroly [
sic
] equipped than ever before.” He still found hope.
²⁸

Asa Lewis did not. On Christmas night Breckinridge visited him in the Murfreesboro jail and frankly told him that his efforts had been fruitless. Lewis took the news with composure, and then gave the general all his worldly possessions, a pocketbook and a comb, and a few letters. “Old Joe” Lewis came soon after dawn the next morning, and yet again he and Breckinridge tried to sway Bragg without success. In Kentucky it was rumored later that this morning several companies of Orphans ran to their arms threatening mutiny before they were calmed.

A general order called for the field officer of the day to select one lieutenant, one noncommissioned officer, and three men from each regiment in the brigade for the firing detail. Three rifles were loaded with blank charges. Then arose a problem. The field officer selected at least two, and perhaps three, lieutenants to command the detail, but each refused. When he ordered Lieutenant G. B. Overton of the 2d Kentucky to perform the task, Overton said, “I’ll give up my sword before I’ll command that detail!” Finally another officer agreed to take the distasteful task, and the brigade formed on the parade ground, making three sides of a hollow square.

At 11
A.M.
a wagon bearing Lewis appeared and stopped on the open side of the square. Behind it lumbered another carrying a coffin. There followed the officer of the day, and most of the brigade commanders on horseback, Breckinridge among them. Thompson recalled of Lewis, “As the wagon passed near me I could see the pale but firm countenance; the somewhat unnatural glare of his eyes when he looked upon those fellow-Kentuckians.” The detail stood Lewis facing the brigade, his back to the open side of the square, and bound his hands behind him. Thompson said he asked not to be blindfolded. Johnny Green said he asked for the mask so that he would not have to recognize the comrades who soon would kill him.

Breckinridge dismounted and walked to the condemned man. They spoke in hushed tones for a moment, then the general remounted and rode aside. Lewis addressed the Orphans, telling them not to be distressed. “I beg of you to aim to kill,” he closed, “it will be merciful to me. Good-bye.”

The lieutenant ordered “ready.” The firing squad, just ten paces in front of Lewis, brought their rifles to their shoulders. In the pattering of a heavy rain the condemned man heard the metallic clicking of the hammers being drawn back.

“Aim.” Every rifle pointed to the Orphan’s heart.

“Fire.”

A host of images followed, which the Kentuckians never forgot. Ed Thompson remembered how the “sudden crash reverberated over the field.” Others closed their eyes and felt only the rain. Some looked toward Breckinridge who, when Lewis fell dead, pitched forward on his horse’s neck “with a deathly sickness,” and had to be caught by his staff before he fell to the ground.

Asa Lewis was past remembering. The detail placed him in the coffin, and buried him the same day in Murfreesboro next to a cousin who died there the year before. Then, said Johnny Green, “a gloom settled over the command.” As for Breckinridge, he recovered his composure and placed Lewis’ few belongings with his own things for safekeeping. He would carry them with him for the next seven years in keeping his promise to the condemned man. Finally, when he received a letter in 1869 stating, “I am the widowed mother of the unfortunate young man who was killed (or rather butchered) at Murfreesboro,” the general redeemed his pledge and sent the comb, and letters, and pocketbook to Sallie Lewis.
²⁹

Braxton Bragg won this little battle with the Orphans, but it came at great price. “It created a profound sensation,” wrote one observer, “and incensed Hanson’s Kentucky brigade beyond measure.” In protest, they declined to pass sentence on future Kentucky soldiers convicted of desertion. In the soldiers of the brigade, the commanding general now had hundreds of enemies, and their officers proved instrumental in the campaign to replace him in command of the Army. Breckinridge apparently never mentioned the matter to Bragg again, for other grievances would soon arise between them to supplant the death of this one poor Orphan now gone home. A federal army was on the move, and soon Bragg, Breckinridge, and the Orphan Brigade would pass through fiery hell. With the earth covering Lewis still moist, Bragg and the Kentuckians approached the watershed of their stormy career.
³⁰

“I
NEVER SUFFERED SO FROM COLD
in any one day in all my life,” Squire Bush wrote in his diary on December 30. It was not only the cold that set him shuddering that winter day. As well it could have been from the prospect of a great terrible battle that would commence at any moment, for facing Bragg’s Army at Murfreesboro this day stood forty-one thousand well-equipped Federals and General William S. Rosecrans, ready to fight.
¹

Four days before, as Asa Lewis went to his grave, Rosecrans moved his army south from Nashville. Bragg’s cavalry delayed his advance but still, by December 29, Federals approached Murfreesboro. Rosecrans would drive Bragg and his thirty-five thousand Confederates from Tennessee, he hoped, and he could do it here at Murfreesboro, along Stones River.

The river ran north to south in a crooked path a mile east of Murfreesboro, and was easily fordable at several points. Bragg placed the bulk of his army across the stream, while Breckinridge’s division he situated on the Murfreesboro side, on a group of hills that commanded the entire field. There he could cover the town and, as well, be in a position to make a wide flank attack against the enemy should Bragg see the opportunity.

On the morning of December 29, Breckinridge sent Lewis and Hunt’s regiments, with Cobb’s battery and the 41st Alabama, to occupy a particularly prominent hill in his front, which overlooked the
river. From this eminence his artillery commanded virtually the entire enemy line when the battle began. The rest of his division had taken their place the day before, Jackman watching the stream of glittering bayonets as they passed through Murfreesboro toward the field. “Uncle Tom” Hunt returned from a furlough just begun in order to be in the coming fight. Adjutant Henry Curd of his regiment felt an overpowering premonition of death, and left messages and effects with Jackman and others. A near-freezing rain drizzled all that day (the twenty-ninth) and into the dark, yet no fires burned that might reveal the Confederate positions. Midnight passed before the men received their rations of beef and cornmeal, cooked in the rear and carried forward still warm.