History of Kershaw's Brigade / With Complete Roll of Companies, Biographical Sketches, Incidents, Anecdotes, etc.

by D. A. Dickert

On the morning of the 15th or 16th of September Kershaw's Brigade was put aboard the trains at White Oak Station, and commenced the long ride to North Georgia. Hood's Division was already on the way. Jenkins' (S.C.) Brigade had been assigned to that division, but it and one of the other of Hood's brigades failed to reach the battleground in time to participate in the glories of that event. General McLaws, also, with two of his brigades, Bryan's and Wofford' (Georgians), missed the fight, the former awaiting the movements of his last troops, as well as that of the artillery.

Long trains of box cars had been ordered up from Richmond and the troops were loaded by one company being put inside and the next on top, so one-half of the corps made the long four days' journey on the top of box cars. The cars on all railroads in which troops were transported were little more than skeleton cars; the weather being warm, the troops cut all but the frame work loose with knives and axes. They furthermore wished to see outside and witness the fine country and delightful scenery that lay along the route; nor could those Inside bear the idea of being shut up in a box car while their comrades on top were cheering and yelling themselves hoarse at the waving of handkerchiefs and flags in the hands of the pretty women and the hats thrown in the air by the old men and boys along the roadside [264] as the trains sped through the towns, villages, and hamlets of the Carolinas and Georgia, No, no; the exuberant spirits of the Southern soldier were too great to allow him to hear yelling going on and not yell himself. He yelled at everything he saw, from an ox-cart to a pretty woman, a downfall of a luckless cavalryman to a charge in battle.

The news of our coming had preceded us, and at every station and road-crossing the people of the surrounding country, without regard to sex or age, crowded to see us pass, and gave us their blessings and God speed as we swept by with lightning speed. Our whole trip was one grand ovation. Old men slapped their hands in praise, boys threw up their hats in joy, while the ladies fanned the breeze with their flags and handkerchiefs; yet many a mother dropped a silent tear or felt a heart-ache as she saw her long absent soldier boy flying pass without a word or a kiss.

At the towns which we were forced to stop for a short time great tables were stretched, filled with the bounties of the land, while the fairest and the best women on earth stood by and ministered to every wish or want. Was there ever a purer devotion, a more passionate patriotism, a more sincere loyalty, than that displayed by the women of the South towards the soldier boys and the cause for which they fought? Was there ever elsewhere on earth such women? Will there ever again exist circumstances and conditions that will require such heroism, fortitude, and suffering? Perhaps so, perhaps not.

In passing through Richmond we left behind us two very efficient officers on a very pleasant mission, Dr. James Evans, Surgeon of the Third, who was to be married to one of Virginia's fair daughters, and Captain T.W. Gary, of same regiment, who was to act as best man. Dr. Evans was a native South Carolinian and a brother of Brigadier General N.G. Evans, of Manassas fame. While still a young man, he was considered one of the finest surgeons and practitioners in the army. He was kind and considerate to his patients, punctual and faithful in his duties, and withal a dignified, refined gentleman. Such confidence had the soldiers in his skill and competency, that none felt uneasy when their lives or limbs, were left to his careful handling. Both officers rejoined us in a few days.

We reached Ringold on the evening of the 19th of September, and [265] marched during the night in the direction of the day's battlefield. About midnight we crossed over the sluggish stream of Chickamauga, at Alexander's Bridge, and bivouaced near Hood's Division, already encamped. Chickamauga! how little known of before, but what memories its name is to awaken for centuries afterwards! What a death struggle was to take place along its borders between the blue and the gray, where brother was to meet brother—where the soldiers of the South were to meet their kinsmen of the Northwest! In the long, long ago, before the days of fiction and romance of the white man in the New World, in the golden days of legend of the forest dwellers, when the red man chanted the glorious deeds of his ancestors during his death song to the ears of his children, this touching story has come down from generation to generation, until it reached the ears of their destroyers, the pale faces of to-day:

Away in the dim distant past a tribe of Indians, driven from their ancestral hunting grounds in the far North, came South and pitched their wigwams along the banks of the "river of the great bend," the Tennessee. They prospered, multiplied, and expanded, until their tents covered the mountain sides and plains below. The braves of the hill men hunted and sported with their brethren of the valley. Their children fished, hunted, played, fought, and gamboled in mimic warfare as brothers along the sparkling streamlets that rise in the mountain ridges, their sparkling waters leaping and jumping through the gorges and glens and flowing away to the "great river." All was peace and happiness; the tomahawk of war had long since been buried, and the pipe of peace smoked around their camp fires after every successful hunting expedition. But dissentions arose—distrust and embittered feelings took the place of brotherly love. The men of the mountains became arrayed against their brethren of the plains, and they in turn became the sworn enemies of the dwellers of the cliffs. The war hatchet was dug up and the pipe of peace no longer passed in brotherly love at the council meeting. Their bodies were decked in the paint of war, and the once peaceful and happy people forsook their hunting grounds and entered upon, the war path.

Early on an autumn day, when the mountains and valleys were clothed in golden yellow, the warriors of the dissenting factions met along [266] the banks of the little stream, and across its turbid waters waged a bitter battle from early morn until the "sun was dipping behind the palisades of Look-Out Mountain"—no quarters given and none asked. It was a war of extermination. The blood of friend and foe mingled in the stream until its waters were said to be red with the life-blood of the struggling combatants. At the close of the fierce combat the few that survived made a peace and covenant, and then and there declared that for all time the sluggish stream should be called Chickamauga, the "river of blood." Such is the legend of the great battleground and the river from whence it takes its name.

General Buckner had come down from East Tennessee with his three divisions, Stewart's, Hindman's, and Preston's, and had joined General Bragg some time before our arrival, making General Bragg's organized army forty-three thousand eight hundred and sixty-six strong. He was further reinforced by eleven thousand five hundred from General Joseph E. Johnston's army in Mississippi and five thousand under General Longstreet, making a total of sixty thousand three hundred and thirty-six, less casualties of the 18th and 19th of one thousand one hundred and twenty-four; so as to numbers on the morning of the 20th, Bragg had of all arms fifty-nine thousand two hundred and forty-two; while the Federal commander claimed only sixty thousand three hundred and sixty six, but at least five thousand more on detached duty and non-combatants, such as surgeons, commissaries, quartermasters, teamsters, guards, etc. Bragg's rolls covered all men in his army. Rosecrans was far superior in artillery and cavalry, as all of the batteries belonging to Longstreet's corps, or that were to attend him in the campaign of the West, were far back in South Carolina, making what speed possible on the clumsy and cumbersome railroads of that day. So it was with Wofford's and Bryan's Brigades, of McLaw's Division, Jenkins' and one of Hood's, as well as all of the subsistence and ordnance trains. The artillery assigned to General Longstreet by General Lee consisted of Ashland's and Bedford's (Virginia), Brooks' (South Carolina), and Madison's (Louisiana) batteries of light artillery, and two Virginia batteries of position, all under the command of Colonel Alexander.

As for transportation, the soldiers carried all they possessed on [267] their backs, with four days of cooked rations all the time. Generally one or two pieces of light utensils were carried by each company, in which all the bread and meat were cooked during the night.