Sketch of the First Kentucky Brigade

by George B. Hodge

SKETCH
OF THE
FIRST KENTUCKY BRIGADE

BY ITS
ADJUTANT GENERAL, G. B. HODGE.

FRANKFORT, KY.
PRINTED AT THE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFICE.
MAJOR & JOHNSTON.
1874.

TO
GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE,
ITS NOBLE COMMANDER,
TO THE
GALLANT SURVIVORS,
AND TO THE
MEMORY OF THE IMMORTAL DEAD
OF THE BRIGADE,
THIS SKETCH
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

SKETCH OF THE 1ST KENTUCKY BRIGADE.

In the general history which will go down to posterity of such immense bodies of men as were gathered under the banners of the Confederate States of America, it is not likely that more than a brief and cursory reference can or will be made to the services of so small a force as composed the First Kentucky Brigade. Yet the anomalous position which it occupied, in regard to the revolution, in having revolted against both State and Federal authority, exiling itself from home, from fortune, from kindred, and from friends—abandoning everything which makes life desirable, save honor—gave it an individuality which cannot fail to attract the attention of the calm student, who, in coming years, traces the progress of the mighty social convulsion in which it acted no ignoble part. The State, too, from which it came, whatever may be its destiny or its ultimate fate, will remember, with melancholy and mournful interest, not, perhaps, unmingled with remorse, the career of that gallant band of men, who, of all the thousands in its borders inheriting the proud name and lofty fame of Kentuckians, stood forth fearlessly by deeds to express the sentiments of an undoubted majority of her people—disapprobation of wrong and tyranny. Children now in their cradles, youths as yet unborn, will inquire, with an earnest eagerness which volumes of recital cannot satisfy, how their countrymen demeaned themselves in the fierce ordeal which they had elected as the test of their patriotism; how they bore themselves on the march and in the bivouac; how in the trials of the long and sad retreat; how amid the wild carnage of the stricken field. Fair daughters of the State will oftentimes, even amid the rigid censorship which forbids utterance of words, love to come in thought and linger about the lonely graves where the men of the Kentucky Brigade sleep, wrapped in no winding-sheets save their battle-clothes, beneath no monuments save the trees of the forest, torn and mutilated by the iron storm, in which the slumberers met death. It has seemed to me not improper, therefore, that the story should be told by one possessing peculiar facilities for acquiring knowledge of the movements of detached portions of the force, and who, in the capacity of a staff officer, under the directions of its General, issued every order and participated in every movement of the brigade, who had not only the opportunity but the desire to do justice to all who composed it, from him who bore worthily the truncheon of the General, to those who not less worthily in their places bore their muskets as privates. A deep interest will always be felt in the history of the effort which was made, by men strong in their faith in the correctness of republican forms of government, notwithstanding the tyranny which the great experiment in the United States had culminated in, to reconstruct from the shattered fragments of free institutions upon which the armies of the Federal power were trampling, a social and political fabric, under the shelter of which they and their posterity might enjoy the rights of freemen. When the first seven Southern States seceded, and President Lincoln took the initial steps to coerce them, the Legislature of Kentucky, by an almost unanimous vote of the House of Representatives, declared that any attempt to do so by marching troops over her soil would be resisted to the last extremity. The Governor had refused to respond to the call of the Executive for troops for this purpose. The Legislature approved his course. But here unanimity ceased; effort after effort was made in the Legislature to provide for the call of a sovereignty convention. The majority steadily resisted it. As a compromise, the neutrality of the State was assumed, acquiesced in by the sympathizers with the North because they intended to violate it when the occasion was ripe; acquiesced in by the Southern men because, while their impulses all prompted them to make common cause with their Southern brethren, they believed that the neutrality of the State, in presenting an effective barrier of seven hundred miles of frontier between the South and invasion, offered her more efficient assistance than the most active co-operation could have done. The Legislature adjourned; the canvass commenced for a new General Assembly; delegates were elected, pledged to strict neutrality; the Northern sympathizers had been vigorous, active, and energetic, and unscrupulous. They had in every county organized “Home Guards;” arms were, by their connivance, introduced by the Federal Government in large quantities. On the first Monday in September the Legislature met, the mask was thrown off; neutrality was scouted; troops were openly levied for the Northern army, and the outraged Southern men revolted.

Early in the summer of 1861, bodies of the young men of the State had repaired to Camp Boone, in Tennessee, near the Kentucky line, where were forming regiments to be mustered into the service of the Confederate States. Most of these had been previously members of the State Guard of Kentucky, and consequently had enjoyed the advantage of systematic and scientific drill. They were rapidly organized into three regiments of infantry, known as the 2d, 3d, and 4th Kentucky Regiments of Volunteers, the 2d having as its Colonel, J. M. Hawes, recently an officer of the United States Army, but who, with a devotion which almost invariably manifested itself among the officers of Southern birth, promptly and cheerfully gave up the advantages of a certain and fixed position in a regularly organized army, to offer his sword and military knowledge to the cause of Southern independence. He was soon succeeded by Colonel Roger Hanson. The 3d had as its Colonel, Lloyd Tighlman, the 4th Robert P. Trabue. Colonel Tighlman, before his regiment was actively in service, was made a Brigadier, and its Lieut. Colonel, Thompson, succeeded to the Colonelcy. These three regiments formed the nucleus of a brigade, to the command of which Brigadier General S. B. Buckner, recently Inspector General and active Commander of the Kentucky State Guard, was assigned by President Davis. To this command were afterwards added the 5th Kentucky, commanded by Colonel Thomas Hunt, the 6th, commanded by Colonel Joseph Lewis, Cobb’s battery, and Byrne’s battery of artillery.

On the 17th of September, 1861, General Buckner, with some Tennessee troops and the Kentucky regiments, moved to Bowling Green, in Kentucky, and occupied it, fortifying it and fitting it for the base of active operations of the Confederate armies in Kentucky, which it became for some months. One regiment of infantry and a battery of artillery was thrown forward to the bridge on Green river, under command of Colonel Hawes—the bridge, shortly after, was burned by the Confederate troops. Capt. John Morgan, a few days subsequently to this, reached this command with one hundred men from the interior of Kentucky. These men were mounted, to serve as scouts; and here commenced that career which afterwards gained for their fearless leader a continental reputation as a bold, daring, and effective partisan officer. Few men, indeed, with means so limited, and in the midst of movements so grand and stupendous that the career of general officers have been lost sight of, have won such a name and reputation. Of a mild and unassuming demeanor, gentle and affable in his manners, handsome in person, and possessed of all that polish of address which is supposed to best qualify men for the drawing-room and parlor, no enterprise, however dangerous, no reconnoissance, however tiresome and wearying, could daunt his spirits or deter him from his purpose. For months, with his handful of men, he swept the northern bank of Green river, cutting off the supplies of the enemy, destroying bridges necessary for their transportation, capturing their pickets, and harassing their flanks, moving with a celerity and secrecy which defied pursuit or detection. No commander of a detached post or guard of the enemy could flatter himself that distance from Bowling Green or disagreeableness of weather could protect him from a visit from Morgan. He was liable to be called upon at any hour, in any weather, or at any point beyond the intrenched camps of the Federal army. The earth might be soaked with rain, which for days had been falling, the roads might be impassable, the Green and Barren rivers with their tributaries might be swollen far beyond their banks, but over that earth and across those rivers, when least expected, came Morgan as with the swoop of an eagle; and, after destroying the munitions of the enemy, or capturing his guards, was away again, leaving behind him a polite note intimating he would call again soon, or perhaps telegraphing a dispatch to the nearest Federal commander, giving him full and precise particulars of the movements he had just made, and most provoking details of the damage he had just committed. Long after the Confederate army had retired from Kentucky, when the entire State was in undisputed possession of the Northern armies, many a Southern sympathizer found immunity and protection from maltreatment and outrage by the significant threat that Morgan would visit that neighborhood soon. And, indeed, during the disastrous retreat from Nashville, the tireless partisan, passing through Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, far in the rear of the Federal army, fell upon their train at Gallatin, Tennessee, and lit up the spirits of the despondent Tennesseans by one of his bold and daring strokes. Even when the Southern army had passed the Tennessee river, when every available soldier of the South was supposed to be at Corinth to meet the overwhelming hosts of the invader, Morgan, gathering three or four hundred of his men, recrossed the river, fell upon the railroad train at Athens, Alabama, captured two hundred and eighty prisoners, and destroyed the cars. Ambushed, defeated, cut to pieces, and routed by greatly superior forces a few days afterwards, hardly had the news reached Louisville of his disaster, when, collecting two hundred of his scattered command, he fell like a thunderbolt upon the railroad train at Cave City, in the centre of Kentucky, capturing many prisoners, thousands of dollars in money, and destroying forty-three baggage cars laden with the enemy’s stores.

Early in November, 1861, the Hon. John C. Breckinridge arrived at Bowling Green, when he resigned his seat as Senator from Kentucky, in the Federal Congress, and was immediately commissioned as Brigadier General, and assigned to the command of the Kentucky Brigade, General Buckner assuming command of a division of which the Kentucky Brigade was a component part. He assumed command on the 16th of November—having as his Chief of Staff and A. A. General, Captain George B. Hodge, and Aid-de-Camp, Thomas T. Hawkins. The brigade was ordered to Oakland Station, on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, where, in connection with Hindman’s brigade, it remained in observation of the movements of the enemy on the north bank of the Green river, who was known to be in great force at Munfordsville, and in his cantonments extending back towards Elizabethtown, and was supposed to be only waiting the completion of the Green river bridge, which he was repairing, to advance his entire column, estimated at 80,000 men, on Bowling Green and Nashville. Behind the curtain of the brigades of Hindman and Breckinridge, Gen. Johnston was rapidly pushing on the fortifications at Bowling Green; and by the latter part of January, 1862, they had become quite formidable.