The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (52 page)

6.
O.R.
, I, 44, pp. 81, 382, 881, 888, 907, Vol. 53, pp. 33–34; Fred Joyce, “From Infantry to Cavalry, No. IV,”
Southern Bivouac
, III (Mar. 1885), pp. 299–300; Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, p. 635.

7.
O.R.
, I, 44, pp. 922–23, 961, 965, Vol. 45, Part 2, p. 669; Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, p. 24.

8.
Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, pp. 179–80; Jackman Diary (Dec. 25, 1864); Joyce, “Infantry to Cavalry,” p. 301.

9.
Thompson,
First Kentucky Brigade
, pp. 404–5, 407; “Swift Justice,”
Southern Bivouac
, III (Jan. 1885), p. 214; undated clipping in Jackman Diary; Thomas Owens, “Standing Picket in a Georgia Swamp,”
Southern Bivouac
, I (Apr. 1883), pp. 330–32; “Taps,”
Southern Bivouac
, I (Oct. 1882), p. 85; Marshall to Breckinridge (Feb. 23, 1865), Hawkins Compiled Service Record, RG 109, NA.

10.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 25–26, 392, 664; Special Order No. 110 (Dec. 29, 1864), Lewis Compiled Service Record, General Order (Jan. 17, 1865), Chap. II, Vol. 314, unnumbered, undated entry in Chap. VIII, Vol. 72, RG 109, NA; Thompson,
First Kentucky Brigade
, p. 359;
O.R.
, I, 47, Part 2, pp. 1,072, 1,149–50.

11.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 660, 666, 694, 701; John L. Marshall, “Captain William Lashbrook,”
Southern Bivouac
, I (Feb. 1883), pp. 247–48.

12.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 291–93; “Taps,”
Southern Bivouac
, I (Oct. 1882), p. 83; Joyce, “Orphan Brigade Glee Club,” pp. 414–15; Fred Joyce, “From Infantry to Cavalry, No. II,”
Southern Bivouac
, III (Jan. 1885), p. 222; Jackman Diary (Dec. 11, 23, 1864, Jan. 1, 10, 13, Feb. 1, 1865); Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, p. 188.

13.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 283, 602; T. H. Ellis, “Columbia—As Seen by a Rebel Scouting Party the Day After Sherman’s Evacuation,”
Southern Bivouac
, I (Oct. 1882), pp. 74–78.

14.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 24, 283, 436–37, 477; Thompson,
First Kentucky Brigade
, p. 470;
O.R.
, I, 47, Part 3, p. 716; Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, pp. 192–93.

15.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 285, 290, 394, 789; Joyce, “Silent Man,” p. 77; obituary in Joseph H. Lewis Scrapbook; Louisville
Post
(Jan. 30, 1908); Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, p. 194.

16.
Joyce, “From Infantry to Cavalry, No. IV,” p. 301; Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, pp. 195–96; P. M. B. Young to Lewis (May 2, 1865), Joseph H. Lewis Scrapbook;
O.R.
, I, 49, Part 2, pp. 603–4.

17.
Jackman Diary, pp. 177–81, 193–94; Beth G. Crabtree and James W. Patton, eds.,
“Journal of a Secesh Lady”: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston, 1860–1866
(Raleigh, N.C., 1979), p. 672; Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, p. 196; Davis,
Breckinridge
, pp. 497–98, 522–24; Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 395, 842; Thompson,
First Kentucky Brigade
, pp. 370–71.

1.
Lewis to G. Whipple (June 27, 1865), Lewis Compiled Service Record, RG 109, NA; Jackman Diary, pp. 181–83; Kirwan,
Johnny Green
, pp. 197–207.

2.
Grainger,
Boys in Gray
, pp. 42–43; Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 1,048–49.

3.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 450, 477–79, 490–91, 532, 829, 1,048–54; Louisville
Courier-Journal
(June 14, 1920); Louisville
Times
(June 14, 1920).

4.
Davis,
Breckinridge
, pp. 590–92, 613–14.

5.
John H. Weller, “The Confederate Dead at Chickamauga,”
Southern Bivouac
, II (Dec. 1883), p. 192; Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, pp. 325–26.

6.
Thompson,
Orphan Brigade
, p. 840; undated cards in Jackman Diary; “The Southern Bivouac,”
Southern Bivouac
, III (May 1885), pp. 424–26.

7.
Clippings in Jackman Diary; “Letter from Fred Joyce, Company D, Fourth Kentucky Infantry,”
Southern Bivouac
, II (Sept. 1883), p. 31; “Third Reunion of the Kentucky Brigade,”
Southern Bivouac
, III (Nov. 1884), pp. 120–21.

I
T IS QUITE SURPRISING
when dealing with an organization as large and as literate as the Orphan Brigade to discover a relative dearth of source materials. Only two bona fide diaries and one small collection of soldier letters are known to exist. Surely more are lurking somewhere, but an extensive search of Kentucky has failed to reveal them. How unusual this is when compared to the fact that more than four thousand Kentuckians served with the brigade, and that so many of them were writers and prominent individuals both before and after the war. The lack of letters, however, is probably explained by the fact that the Confederate postal service could not operate in Kentucky, and letters home had to go through Union lines and the federal post via flag of truce and a very circuitous route. Most probably never reached their destinations and were lost in transit.

How fortunate we are, then, that the sources that are available on the organization are of such uniformly superior quality. With only a few exceptions, the materials for studying the 1st Kentucky Brigade are of a character decidedly better and more reliable than those extant for any other similar unit in the Confederate Army. What follows are comments designed to illuminate the particular features of the more important sources, after which appears an accounting of all sources used in writing this book.

By far the most valuable single source for the Orphan Brigade is the collection of its official papers that Fayette Hewitt gave to the United States War Department in 1887 when that agency was compiling its mammoth
Official Records
. It is unique among the records of Confederate commands. The collection consists of twenty bound volumes of morning reports, orders and circulars, telegrams, copies of letters sent and received at brigade headquarters,
records of details and furloughs, hospital reports, and quartermaster and clothing accounts. They now reside in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., designated as Chapter II, Volumes 305–17, Chapter VI, Volume 663, and Chapter VIII, Volumes 67–72, in Record Group 109. In addition to the bound volumes, Hewitt turned over thousands of pieces of individual correspondence, reports, courts-martial statements, and the like. Much of this material is now filed in the individual compiled service records of the generals, staff, officers, and men of the brigade, also in Record Group 109. The cumulative picture that this mass of official records presents is invaluable to understanding not only the formal service of the Orphans, but also their human element.

Unfortunately, the yield is not so bountiful when one seeks the personal papers of the Orphans. Simon Buckner’s Papers at the Huntington Library provide little. Numerous collections of John C. Breckinridge Papers, particularly those at the Chicago Historical Society, the Huntington Library, and the New-York Historical Society add a little more, as do the Breckinridge Family Papers at the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, the bulk of Breckinridge’s war papers burned in a house fire in Lexington in the early 1870s. We are fortunate in a splendid collection of Roger W. Hanson Letters at the Library of Congress, almost all relating to his term as a prisoner of war. Yet within them is much of “Old Bench-leg’s” spirit, and some good comment on his 2d Kentucky. Joseph H. Lewis’ papers, too, went up in flames, but a scrapbook of his does survive in the possession of his granddaughter, Helene Lewis Gildred of San Diego. The one set of letters mentioned previously are the Thomas Winstead Papers in the possession of Mr. Thomas D. Winstead of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Though they contain relatively little about the doings of the brigade, still their very rarity makes them invaluable, particularly for their picture of the anguish one Kentuckian suffered over his defenseless family at home.

Next in importance are the unit histories, a field dominated, of course, by Ed Porter Thompson’s
History of the First Kentucky Brigade
and
History of the Orphan Brigade
. Both are monumental works, and in the main far more accurate than most Civil War unit histories, thanks to a thorough grounding in the brigade’s official papers. Their actual narrative portions are somewhat lackluster, being frequently long verbatim extracts from official reports. What sets them apart, however, are the rich wealth of anecdote and story scattered throughout. In the later volume, these are gathered at the ends of the appropriate chapters, but still one must glean the individual soldier sketches that make up the bulk of the book, for Thompson buried much there as well. Also, though the 1898 work is chiefly an expansion of the 1868 volume, there is still some excellent material in the earlier book that he omitted in its successor. Both must be used in tandem.

George B. Hodge’s 1874
Sketch of the First Kentucky Brigade
is largely a revision of a series of articles he published in
Land We Love
in 1867–68. No attempt is made at official history. Rather, it is a largely personal memoir that ends at Shiloh. It devotes considerable space to Breckinridge and Morgan, and gives an excellent account of the retreat from Bowling Green. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Henry George’s
History of the 3d, 7th, 8th, and 12th Kentucky, C.S.A.
, published in 1911. The portion of it that recounts the brief service of the 3d and 7th Kentucky infantries with the Orphans is chiefly plagiarized from Hodge and Thompson. Much better is Basil W. Duke’s
A History of Morgan’s Cavalry
, published in 1867. This provides excellent material on the background of Confederate Kentuckians, Camp Boone, Hanson, and Breckinridge, and particularly of the Orphans’ part at Hartsville.

Biographies of the leaders of the Orphan Brigade are few and of varying usefulness. Arndt M. Stickles’
Simon Bolivar Buckner, Borderland Knight
is an excellent biography that offers much on the State Guard, but little on the Orphans. William C. Davis’
Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol
, published in 1974, is the fullest biography of that colorful figure. In 1943 R. Gerald McMurtry published his brief
Ben Hardin Helm
, which, though the best source available on this gentle man, sheds no light on the story of his brigade.

Of soldier reminiscences there are several, but their quality varies greatly. Unquestionably the finest is John S. Jackman’s Journal in the Library of Congress, a source rivaling the official papers and Thompson’s books in importance. This is a copy Jackman began in the summer of 1865, working from and often expanding his actual wartime notes from the 9th Kentucky. The work was finished sometime prior to 1868, for he loaned it to Thompson when the latter was writing his first book. Jackman’s journal captured the human element of the Orphans better than any other single source, and as well provides vital illumination on several subjects—notably the mutinies in the 6th and 9th Kentucky regiments—for which the official records are too brief, and Thompson altogether silent. Additionally, Jackman includes two wartime letters he wrote to southern editors for publication, and the last portion of the journal is a scrapbook of his postwar articles, clippings describing reunions, copies of speeches, and other material of great interest. It is fortunate that Jackman’s ill health prevented his performing greater service in the field, for it saved him to the larger work of leaving this outstanding record of his command.

The only completely contemporaneous soldier account we have is from the 6th Kentucky, the Squire Helm Bush Diary at the Hardin County Historical Society. It covers only the period October 1, 1862, to December 1, 1863, and
is more often than not frustratingly brief, but still it provides occasional glimpses of the Orphans’ life and attitudes.

Of a completely different character are the reminiscences written in later years. Gervis Grainger’s
Four Years with the Boys in Gray
was not published until 1902, and is almost worthless. His dates and accounts of battles are invariably wrong, and much of the major action of the brigade he missed due to illness or imprisonment. His book is useful only for occasional anecdotal material, and for his admitted part in the mutiny of the 6th Kentucky. Much the same is the case with Lot Young’s 1912 edition of
Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Orphan Brigade
, his record of service with the 4th Kentucky.

A special case is Albert D. Kirwan’s edition of
Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade
, published in 1956. Regarded since its appearance as an important work on the Kentucky Brigade, it too is highly unreliable. Kirwan states that Green wrote it chiefly from memory and some wartime notes, starting around 1890. As with most memoirs written years after the fact, it is often wrong in its chronology. More than this, however, Johnny Green incorporated into his work as his own, accounts of events that he actually borrowed from others. It is clear that he drew much from Jackman’s 1866 articles and his later publications in the
Southern Bivouac
, his accounts sometimes matching Jackman’s almost word for word. Indeed, it is clear that Green was an avid reader of the
Bivouac
, for several anecdotal episodes described therein he appropriated into his own narrative, in the process making himself the protagonist. As a result, while Green’s memoir is useful only for its colorful incidents and episodes of the 9th Kentucky, one must be careful even with them, not knowing whether they really happened to Johnny or he just borrowed them from someone else.

The first three volumes of the
Southern Bivouac
are in a class of their own. Intended to memorialize all Kentuckians in the Confederacy, its articles reflect chiefly a preoccupation with the 4th Kentucky, not surprising since two of its editors came from that unit. Articles by Jackman, John Marshall, Pirtle, Owens, Tydings, and others give an outstanding picture of the spirit of these men, and do more to add flesh to an account of their camp and field life than any other source. A special note must be made of the contributions of “Fred Joyce” to the
Bivouac
. They make up nearly half of the total Orphan Brigade articles published during those three years. Yet no man of that name served in the brigade! The name does not appear in Thompson’s rosters, nor among the service records in the National Archives, but the writing rings too true to be fabricated. Clearly, Fred Joyce was a
nom de plume
, but a study of his articles gives enough clues to identify the real author. He served in Company D, 4th Kentucky. He was a member of the glee club. He was wounded at Chickamauga, recuperated at Dalton and Atlanta, and served in the mounted engagements as a captain. Happily there is one, and
only one, Orphan who fits these criteria, Captain John Weller. And he happened to be one of the editors of the
Bivouac
, which explains the use of a sobriquet. Clearly it did not look good for an editor to contribute too often to his own journal, yet frequently Weller and Marshall had to write their own recollections in order to fill out an issue. Marshall used a pen name, “Nondescript,” so there was no reason for Weller not to do likewise. How and why he chose Fred Joyce, however, was and is a mystery.