Company L.[2]—Captain, J. J. Parton; Lieutenants, Henry, Russell, and Tillery. Recruited in Knox County, Tenn.
The Regiment was assigned to a brigade composed of the Eighth Texas, Eleventh Texas, First Kentucky, and Fourth Tennessee Regiments and Malone’s Alabama Battalion, Col. Tom Harrison as Senior Colonel commanding the brigade, Maj. Gen. John A. Wharton commanding the division (Gen. Joe Wheeler’s Corps, Army of Tennessee), and sent to Franklin, Tenn., on outpost duty. General Bragg, with the infantry force, was at Murfreesboro, confronting General Rosecrans’s Federal army at Nashville.
It is well enough to state here that there were two Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiments in the army—Colonel Stearns’s Fourth Tennessee and Colonel Smith’s Fourth Tennessee. They had been serving in different departments of the army, one under General Forrest and the other under General Wheeler, most of the time, and we did not know the fact until late in the war. Both had made character under that name, and each tacitly agreed to remain as they had been known, which they did. At the date of the organization of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment it numbered one thousand men, rank and file, made up principally of stout, healthy, and vigorous young men. As stated, our first service as a regiment was at Franklin, on General Bragg’s front and left flank, some twenty miles from Murfreesboro and eighteen miles from Nashville, where we were kept busy for some two months or more in picketing, scouting on all the roads leading toward Murfreesboro from Nashville, occasionally having some hot contests with the enemy, killing, wounding, and capturing some, and losing some ourselves. At one time we scouted toward Nashville in the night, and remained all day in the vicinity, expecting the enemy to come out, as was their custom, on foraging expeditions, which they failed to do. But before leaving we concluded to give them a closer dare. In the evening we came up the Charlotte Pike as far as what is now West Nashville, and, going up Richland Creek, we came in contact with a force of the enemy at Bosley Springs, and, charging them, drove them back to the Harding Pike, capturing some and pursuing the others to where the old penitentiary wall stood, on Church Street. We remained in line a short distance down the road till near sundown; but no enemy appearing, we repaired to our station at Franklin.
The enemy made frequent scouts in the neighborhood of Franklin, sometimes resulting in quite a battle. I remember that in one of these Captain McMillin, a brother of Ex-Governor McMillin, was killed. He was on a visit to some acquaintances in the Regiment, and went out with the Regiment to meet one of these scouts of the enemy.
In the latter part of December, 1862, Rosecrans marched on Murfreesboro. The Regiment skirmished with his advance till he reached the place. Capt. J. R. Lester, of Company F, was desperately wounded in one of these skirmishes. We thought at the time that his wound was mortal, but he returned to his company in a few weeks, and served with them till the surrender at Greensboro, N. C. When Colonel Smith as Senior Colonel assumed the command of the brigade, Capt. J. R. Lester was made his Inspector General, and surrendered as such.
On reaching Murfreesboro we were placed on the right of our line on the Lebanon Pike, where General Bragg supposed the enemy would first attack; but changing his plans during the night, he attacked with his left flank about daylight. A terrific battle ensued here. It seems the enemy at the time was moving to attack Bragg from that flank, and the two armies unexpectedly met in deadly conflict. The battle raged in all its fury for hours. Charge after charge and countercharge was made time and again, with heavy losses on both sides. The Confederates, steadily advancing, gradually forced the enemy back, capturing many pieces of artillery and small arms, with many prisoners. Among the captured was General Willich and his German Brigade. Gen. Jim Rains, of the Confederate army, and General Sill, of the Federal army, were killed in one of these assaults. Before night the Federal army was forced back to the Nashville Pike, at right angles to the position they held when first attacked. The Confederates had gained a great victory. The loss of each was about equal—say, ten thousand. Six thousand Federal prisoners were captured, and several batteries of artillery, besides thousands of muskets and ammunition. The next morning every one expected the battle to be renewed, and were much disappointed that General Bragg did not follow up his advantage, instead of which he remained inactive for several days. In the meantime he ordered General Wheeler, with his cavalry corps, to the rear of General Rosecrans, toward Nashville. All along the way to La Vergne we were picking up prisoners, and everything indicated a defeat and rout of the enemy. At the latter place we came up with a long train of wagons moving toward Nashville with an escort of several thousand cavalry. We engaged them, and, after a considerable battle, they retreated. We captured and destroyed some two hundred wagons, some prisoners were taken, and a good many men on both sides were killed and wounded. Many of Rosecrans’s men had reached Nashville, reporting that his army had been badly beaten. Still no movement had been made by General Bragg at Murfreesboro. The enemy had taken advantage of this inactivity by collecting together their broken columns and taking position on high ground on the banks of Stones River, and crowned it with a number of batteries—fifty-seven pieces—well protected, awaiting the movement of General Bragg. On the first day of January he attacked this well-fortified place of the enemy with the single division of General Breckenridge. After a most gallant assault by Breckenridge, he was repulsed with heavy loss. That night the cavalry of Wheeler occupied the works of the infantry when they withdrew toward Shelbyville. General Bragg, it seems, had sent off during this lull in movements all of his wounded and the prisoners he had taken. At daylight on the 2d of January, 1863, Wheeler’s cavalry also withdrew, following the infantry toward Shelbyville. No pursuit was made. The Federals were as much surprised as the Confederates at the result, and it was sometime during the day before they could realize the fact of the withdrawal of Bragg’s troops. Much adverse criticism was made of General Bragg’s failure to take advantage of the victory he had obtained in the first days of the battle, and especially of the assault he made against the well-prepared works of the enemy, when it should have been with his entire army instead of a single division. Such was the opinion of the humblest soldier in his army.
CHAPTER II.
From Fort Donelson to Chickamauga.
General Bragg upon reaching Shelbyville went regularly into camp, and remained there some three or four months drilling, recruiting, and strengthening his army. General Wheeler, with his corps, was on the front watching the movement of the Federal army at Murfreesboro, scouting all the approaches, with an occasional scrap with the enemy, sometimes approaching the dignity of a battle.
In January, 1863, Wheeler’s Corps was ordered to Fort Donelson with a view of capturing the garrison stationed there. General Forrest was ordered up from West Tennessee to coöperate with Wheeler. On reaching the place, Wheeler made his arrangements to attack, and did attack the fortifications; but General Forrest refusing to coöperate, he was repulsed and the expedition was a failure. Wheeler lost quite a number of men. Col. Frank McNairy, a well-known citizen of Nashville, was killed in leading a charge. The weather was extremely cold. The streams were full of ice and the dirt roads were frozen hard, making it a matter of difficulty to pass over. Men and horses suffered greatly, as much as at any time during the war. On going back to Shelbyville, the Fourth Tennessee was detached and sent by General Bragg to Woodbury to relieve a portion of General Morgan’s command under Captain Hutchison, who was killed in an engagement with the enemy the day before we reached there. He was a fine soldier, and his death was much regretted. His home was at Springfield, Tenn., where he is affectionately remembered. The Regiment was at Woodbury some weeks, during which time we had frequent battles with the enemy coming up from Murfreesboro, where the Federal army was still stationed. We lost quite a number of men, killed and wounded.In one of these engagements Colonel Smith received a saber cut, and would probably have been killed had not the bugler of the Regiment, J. A. Stewart, relieved the situation by a well-directed shot from his pistol. From Woodbury we were ordered over to Trousdale’s Ferry, on the Caney Fork River. We went from there on a scout toward Nashville, and, turning off the Lebanon Pike, went to a point on the Cumberland River a mile above Edgefield Junction, where we waited, in ambush, for a train on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to come in sight. We had a piece of artillery with us, commanded by Lieutenant White; and when a long train made its appearance, he opened on it, and about the first shot went into the steam chest of the engine, bringing the train to a stop in full view of our position. The train was loaded with horses; and after demolishing it and everything in sight, we retired.
Some of the men asked to be permitted to go over and get some of the horses; but Colonel Smith would not allow it, as he had another trip in contemplation, to wit: to go over to the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. Near Smyrna we captured a long train of cars full of officers and soldiers without firing a gun. The men were allowed to help themselves bountifully to the rich booty; and being paroled, the prisoners were permitted to pursue their journey toward Nashville on foot. From there we returned to our post at Trousdale’s Ferry. In a short while thereafter Colonel Smith and Adjutant Minnis were captured by the enemy under the following circumstances: They had been across the river inspecting the picket posts on that side, and on their return to camp after dark they were captured by a scout of the enemy which had been piloted around the pickets by a Union man of that vicinity. As soon as it was ascertained, a squad from the picket post pursued them to the vicinity of Carthage, about seven miles. They came in view of the scouts with the prisoners, whom they managed to keep so exposed that the Confederates were afraid to fire at them for fear of killing Colonel Smith and Minnis. The writer was appointed to fill the place of Adjutant Minnis, and served in this capacity till the battle of Fayetteville, N. C., in February, 1865, when he was appointed Adjutant General of the brigade, and served and surrendered as such at Greensboro, N. C., April 26, 1865. We remained some days longer on the Caney Fork, till General Rosecrans commenced his movement against General Bragg, when we were ordered to Shelbyville. We reached there in time to resist the advance of the enemy, having some well-contested battles with them, in which a good many of our men were killed and wounded, and inflicting a like loss on the enemy. Here the greater part of Colonel Malone’s Battalion, of Alabama, was captured, and we saw no more of them during the war.