Sketch of the First Kentucky Brigade

by George B. Hodge

Few men have moved upon the stage of public life who have been the peers of Albert Sidney Johnston. Tall and commanding in person, of gentle and winning address, he was the most unassuming of men; yet his mind was cast in nature’s largest mould; possessed of that high and serene courage which no reverses or trials could overcome, patient in difficulties, earnest in effort, firm in purpose, he had been invested by the President with the powers of a Pro-Consul. His sway extended from the Alleghenies to the western confines of Texas. Supervising the movements of five separate armies, in countries hundreds of miles apart, his capacious mind embraced the details of all, while exercising almost unlimited authority over four millions of people. No stain of personal or selfish ambition rests upon his noble character. The nation and the army felt that there was always hope while Sidney Johnston lived, and yet his death was not without a grand and crowning triumph. Well he knew the battle must be won; fully as well he knew, to win the battle, that charge must be successful. The last vision which fell upon his glazing sight was the flying ranks of the enemy; the last sound which struck upon his ears, now sealing in death, was the exultant shouts of his army, telling him that the field was won, which he believed secured the triumph of the cause for which he offered up his life.

Pure and lofty had been the great soldier’s life;
Grand and worthy even of himself was his death.

The general repulse of the enemy had now thrown the reserve on the extreme right of the Confederate line. Far on the left might be heard the musketry of the Kentucky Brigade and the roar of its artillery as it pushed its columns forward. It was fighting its way to its gallant General, and the hour was drawing near when they were to meet in the pride of glorious success. General Bragg, observing that behind the right flank of the enemy dense masses of troops were massed, from which reserves were drawn to sustain his line, concentrated the fire of his batteries, loaded with spherical case and shell, upon them. The effect was magical. The right of the enemy broke and fled, the centre followed, then the left wing; and charging along the whole line, the Confederate army swept through the camps of the enemy, capturing three thousand prisoners and driving the Federal force cowering beneath the shelter of the iron-clad gunboats; and then and there, in the full fruition of success, the Kentucky Brigade and its General met for the first time during that bloody day since their separation in the morning, both covered with glory; both proud of and gratified with each other. The terrible day of reckoning so long and so patiently waited for had come at last; and as they strode over the field of blood their pathway to vengeance had been lit by the gleam of bayonets and the lurid glare of the cannon’s flash. The greatest conflict which as yet had taken place between the sections had been won by the scorned and despised “Southern mob.” For fifteen hours they steadily drove before them the finest army of the Federal Government. Superior in numbers, in discipline, in arms, and equipments, the army of Grant had lost its camps, its baggage, provisions and supplies, and the panic-stricken remnant of it huddled cowering under the banks of the Tennessee, only protected from total annihilation by the gunboats lying in the stream, a disorganized and terror-stricken mob, while its dead and wounded lay in thousands for miles behind the Confederate army. By some fatal misapprehension of those in authority, which it is useless now to discuss, the full fruits of the victory were not gathered. The Confederate army paused when it had only to stretch forth its hands and grasp as prisoners of war the whole hostile force. Night fell quickly over the scene of carnage, and the tired heroes, worn out with the long and harassing march of the preceding days, and the fifteen hours of mortal combat, sank, by regiments and brigades, upon the blood-soaked earth, amid the dead and dying, to sleep—a sleep so deep and profound that not even the groans of the wounded, or the deep boom of the heavy guns of the enemy, which were fired during the whole night, could break or disturb it. No record exists of a contest between such numbers of men in a country so densely wooded and in a space so confined. Brilliant generalship General Johnston undoubtedly displayed in surprising the enemy, and in the skill with which he handled raw troops, hurling mass after mass upon the enemy and beating him in detail; but there was neither room nor opportunity for strategy or maneuvre—it was a death grapple of man to man—stern and deadly combat in which the men of the South maintained their long and proud pre-eminence.

During the night, General Buell with a fresh army of twenty-five thousand men, nearly as large as the Confederate army originally was, came up, hastily crossed the river, and threw himself in front of the army defeated on the 6th. The Confederate army, in the meantime, after despoiling the Federal camps, had been withdrawn beyond them and formed anew in order of battle. Skirmishing commenced at 6 o’clock, A. M., but the engagement did not become general until 9 o’clock, A. M., from which time, until 2 P. M., the Northern armies were again, as on the day before, steadily driven back through its camps and forced towards the river. A heavy and continuous rain had commenced falling at midnight after the battle of the 6th, and continued until near daylight. The effect of this upon men wearied and exhausted, as was the Southern army, was terrible. The wounded who had fallen late in the evening, and near the enemy’s lines, could not be recovered; they were consequently exposed during the entire night, and endured sufferings of the most agonizing character. It was impossible, too, in the darkness and confusion, to reform the lines for a night bivouac with that accuracy desirable in such critical circumstances, and the proximity of the abandoned camps of the enemy afforded a temptation to straggling which, in too many cases, proved irresistible, and, as was seen during the battle of the next day, demoralized many corps, and impaired the efficiency, to a great extent, of the army, and it may, with truth, be said, led to the loss of the second day’s battle. So great, indeed, had been the diminution of the ranks by death, wounds, and straggling, that at no time during the contest of the 7th was General Beauregard enabled to bring more than fifteen thousand effective men to hand in battle. The army of the enemy under General Grant had been totally defeated, and had only escaped complete rout and annihilation by its inability to cross the Tennessee river, and the protection of the gunboats; thousands had been slain, thousands wounded, thousands captured, and thousands demoralized, but in a force so large as it originally was (estimated by its own officers at forty-two thousand men) there were, of course, large masses capable of effective service on Monday; to these was to be added the force of Buell of twenty-five thousand fresh troops, and it may be safely estimated that, notwithstanding the reverse of Sunday, and the immense loss of the enemy on that day, he took the field on Monday with quite forty thousand combatants, or nearly three times the Southern force. The leaders of the Confederate army were fully advised of the reinforcement, and of the peril which threatened the Confederate army in a second conflict in its exhausted condition, but they deemed it necessary to cripple this force before withdrawing from the field.

The Kentucky Brigade which had preserved, to a great extent, its organization and discipline, was again stationed upon the extreme left. Its battery of artillery, commanded by Capt. Byrne (Cobb’s battery having on Sunday been destroyed in battle), was engaged for three hours with two batteries of the enemy—firing during the duel more than one thousand cartridges, and finally silenced both. The infantry, drawn up in order of battle as a support to the battery, stood enthusiastic spectators of the tremendous cannonade; and, although frequently suffering severely from the grape of the enemy, more than once broke spontaneously into a shout of encouragement and admiration at the gallant manner in which Byrne handled his guns. The enemy hurled charge after charge of infantry against it, but unsuccessfully. The fifth regiment of infantry, commanded by Col. Thos. H. Hunt, charged in turn, routing the opposing force, but with some loss to its force, losing many valuable officers. Colonel Robert Trabue, of the 4th Kentucky Regiment, as senior Colonel of the brigade, commanded it on this, as on the preceding day, with conspicuous gallantry and marked soldiery ability.

But there is a limit to human endurance. The battle of the 7th was fought by General Beauregard with but fifteen thousand men. Exhausted by the struggle of the preceding day, he had received no reinforcements, and he determined, at 2 o’clock, P. M., to withdraw. In good order, and with the precision of a parade, division after division was withdrawn. General Breckinridge, with his own brigade and Statham’s brigade, bringing up the rear, and bivouacking at the summit of the ridge, during the night, within sight of the enemy’s lines. A soaking rain fell all night upon the wearied troops of the rear guard, while the rest of the army slowly made its way to Corinth.

Many of the noblest of the sons of Kentucky had fallen; but conspicuous in position and character were two men who, in the same discharge, in the same regiment, and within a few feet of each other, fell mortally wounded.

George W. Johnson, of Scott county, Kentucky, had passed more than forty years of his life in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture. Singularly modest and retiring in demeanor, he had seemed to scorn the turmoil of public life and the undignified contest for public place. The soul of honor and high integrity, he was respected by all who came in contact with him. Earnest and sincere in purpose, his course in all things was open, to a proverb; cultivated in mind, he was a profound thinker, if not an active participator, in national politics. Early in the history of secession he had arrived at the conclusion that the separation was final; and with all the earnestness of his straightforward nature he had urged that Kentucky should share the fate and cast her fortunes with the South. When it was evident that the Legislature of Kentucky had sold and bartered her honor to the Federal Government, he promptly abandoned home and its tranquil enjoyments to cast his lot with those of his countrymen, who were gathering at Bowling Green to resist the attempt at coercion; and yet in an act of revolution, the strong reverence of the man for law, order, and regular government, manifested itself. Mainly and almost wholly to his efforts is due the formation of the Provisional Government of Kentucky, of which he was elected the head; and when the army retreated from Kentucky, gathering his Council around him, he accompanied it in all its vicissitudes and movements. On Sunday, during the battle of Shiloh, he served as a volunteer Aid-de-Camp to the commanding officer of the Kentucky Brigade, until his horse was killed under him, when, seizing a musket, he took his place in the ranks of the 4th regiment and fought on foot during the remainder of the day. Monday morning found him in the same humble position, assuming all the duties and sharing all the dangers of a simple private in the ranks. At eleven o’clock he fell, shot through the body, remaining alone and unaided on the field while the army fell back, and during the long and inclement night which succeeded. He was found on the morning of Tuesday by the enemy, and died in his camp. None who knew him can doubt that through the long hours of that day of agony, and the silent stillness of that night of suffering and pain, his great heart was consoled by the conviction of the swift coming independence of his country.

Thos. B. Monroe had early entered public life. His firmness of character, depth of information, and brilliancy of talent, indicated him as a leader of men in the first hours of his manhood. Called before he was thirty years of age to the Secretaryship of State, he had zealously and determinedly advocated the secession of the State. Disappointed, as were thousands of others, at her lukewarmness, he had resigned the Secretaryship, and, making his way through the lines of the Federal army to Bowling Green, had been appointed Major of the 4th Kentucky Regiment. The promise of his military career equaled that of his civil life. A few weeks only was necessary to place him high in the estimation of the senior officers of the army, and to win for him the unbounded confidence of his men. He fell, mortally wounded, within a few feet of Governor Johnson, and died on the field of battle, bequeathing his sword to his infant son, and with the last breath, requesting he might be told “his father had died in defense of his honor and the rights of his country.”

The morning of the 8th of April was consumed in falling back to the junction of the Corinth and Burnsville roads, where General Breckinridge stubbornly took his stand, with his force bivouacking in the open air, sinking often to their boot-tops in mud, drenched nightly with the rain, he and they obstinately refused to move an inch until the wounded in the hospitals were removed. Again and again the enemy sent out strong columns to dislodge him. Sometimes these were charged by the cavalry under Forrest and Adams, and driven back in disorder, losing many prisoners; sometimes, overawed by his firm and dauntless front, they retired without attacking. For five days he thus held his position, his whole force subsisting on rations of damaged bread and raw pork. When he did move every wounded man had been sent forward; the army was safe in its lines at Corinth. On the 13th of April he marched, at the head of his band of heroes, wasted now to spectres, haggard with hunger and suffering, into Corinth. He had won for himself, throughout that entire army, the reputation of a skillful General, a brave and courageous captain, and had now the ardent love and devotion of strangers as well as friends, and was the idol of the Reserve. At Corinth he received the just reward of his high and soldierly conduct, the commission of a Major-General, and passed to the command, permanently, of a division. Here appropriately ends the history of these troops as a brigade. They served throughout the war in other brigades and divisions, but no longer continued to act as one organization.