In any protracted war, all commands which extensively participate have their dark days, and in some respects, outside the disaster at Buffington Island, fifteen days later, the darkest day that ever came to General Morgan’s division was this sad 4th of July. For a little while it checked the enthusiasm and stilled the quickened heartbeats of the returning exiles. On the morrow at Lebanon there would be other sorrowful experiences and the hope of home-going would temporarily vanish when at Lebanon the head of the column turned west instead of continuing east.
On that grim day at Green River Stockade the 11th under Chenault and the 5th under Colonel Smith were asked to do the impossible. They stood until standing was no longer wise, or even brave. The Federal commander reported that the fighting lasted three hours, but the real fighting lasted less than three-quarters of an hour, and with something less than six hundred men engaged, about forty-five were killed and the same number wounded. This was a distressing percentage of mortality under the circumstances of the battle.
Chenault, impetuous, gallant, died close up to the enemy with his face to the foe. Major Brent, of the 5th Kentucky, so full of promise, was killed as he rode up to salute Colonel James B. McCreary, who succeeded Chenault in command of the 11th. Captain Treble, of Christmas raid fame, was among the men who gave their lives on this field for the Southland. As he rose to salute the colonel, who had become such by the death of Chenault, and waved his hand to let him know that he would be ready when the order came, he fell, struck by a bullet that crushed through his brain.
None of those who saw these dead brought out under the flag of truce, and the wounded carried in blankets from out of the woods and from the ravines and laid along the turnpike road from Columbia to Lebanon, will ever forget the harrowing scene. When they looked upon the dead, with their pallid faces turned heavenward, and their pale hands folded across their stilled breasts, poignant grief filled every heart. It did not take long to bury or arrange for burial of the dead. Humanity would care for the wounded, and war’s demands bade the remaining soldiers press forward, and by midnight the division camped a few miles out from Lebanon to rest for the conflict on the morrow.
Colonel Charles Hanson, who commanded the 20th Kentucky Federal Infantry, had prepared to make the best defense possible at Lebanon. He placed his men in the brick depot and in the houses surrounding it. General Morgan disliked to leave anything behind, and so he resolved to capture this force. It was captured, but the cost did not justify the losses. It was there that we saw General Morgan’s youngest brother, “Tom,” as they familiarly called him, go down in the storm. He was a first lieutenant in the 2d Kentucky and was then serving on General Duke’s staff. With the fiery courage of youth, backed by a fearless heart, in the excitement of battle he exposed his person and was struck down by a shot from the depot. War allows no time for partings. It permits no preparation for the great beyond. Standing close to his brother, he could only exclaim, “Brother, I am killed. I am killed,” and then fell into the grief-stricken brother’s arms. He was a mere lad, but he died like a hero.
The taking of a brick depot with several hundred men inside, in war, is not an easy job. It was to cost ten killed and thirty wounded. Here I witnessed what appeared to be one of the bravest things I have ever observed. The 8th Kentucky—Cluke’s—with which I was connected, was ordered to charge the front of the depot. The men were advancing through a field where the weeds were waist-high. It was difficult marching. The thermometer stood over a hundred in the shade, and the foliage of the weeds made the heat still more intense. It was this regiment’s fortune to face the larger door of the depot. It was said that somebody had blundered, but the charge was ordered and the men enthusiastically and bravely obeyed. When within a few hundred feet of the door, the order was passed along to “lie down.” The time in which the “lying down” was done seemed many hours. The regiment was subject to the stinging fire of the Federals in the depot. A number of the men were hit by shots which struck the front of the body and ranged downward through the limbs of the soldiers. Such wounds produced excruciating tortures.
A man by my side was shot in the shoulder this way. He was a brave, uneducated, but faithful mountain soldier. He came from around Somerset and had been a cattle drover before he went away to war. Why he had ever volunteered I never could fully fathom. He had no property, he had no relatives in the Confederacy. He had made a few casual acquaintances in his journeyings as a drover, but these could hardly have influenced him to risk his life for the Southland. He was not a man to seek war for the glory or excitement of campaigning.
Men of his calling are rarely communicative or confidential. Finally one night, on a lonely scout through the mountains, he unburdened his soul and told me why he had gone to war. There was something in the isolation of our surroundings, the constant presence of danger, the depressing shadows of the trees which shut out even the starlight, that made the heavy-hearted man long for human sympathy, and in sad, sad tones he told me his life’s tragedy. He was thirty-two years of age and had fallen desperately in love with a young girl he had met while driving stock along the Wilderness Road, having stopped one night at her father’s house. At the end of each journey he had purchased souvenirs for his sweetheart, small mirrors, plain rings, garnet breastpins and plated bracelets and an occasional dress of many colors, the equal of Joseph’s coat, and these conveyed in the most delicate way to the young lady the great love that was being enkindled in the heart of the silent, undemonstrative drover. He could speak no words, but in deferential courtesy, through these simple tokens, he endeavored to declare the turmoil raging in his bosom.
MAP OF MORGAN’S RIDE AROUND CINCINNATI