After crossing the Tennessee River at Lamb’s Ferry, we left our wagons and considerable private baggage with cooking utensils and tents, at Bear Creek. A few days after, the Federal cavalry crossed the river and captured the whole outfit, except the men in charge of the same. This was the last of our luxuries, tents, cooking utensils or wagons never being issued after that, except to our headquarters or the commanding general and his staff, who employed Duncan to drive the headquarters wagon.
Having been engaged in this, and fearing that the war would end and he would have to go home and report he had never been in any engagements, Duncan decided that he must go into the battle of Perryville with us, where he lost his life, as stated.
After our experience with the ordnance train and battery, our command followed in the rear of our infantry line, which slowly, but gradually, drove the enemy until dark, capturing several batteries of fine guns. By one of the batteries we found the body of General Jackson, a Federal general from Kentucky, who, when he found his infantry had abandoned the battery, seemed determined to throw away his life and, single and alone, dashed up to one of our infantry men, cutting at him with his sword, when the man shot and killed him.
After dark we tied our horses in the edge of a woods, to a rail fence which enclosed a large corn field, where the desperate fighting stopped. We then went into the field and secured some corn for our horses. As the most of the corn was destroyed by the lines of battle, we had to pass over a good deal of ground to get sufficient corn for our horses. At the point where I stopped gathering, having secured as many ears of corn as I could carry in my arms, the dead lay so thick I believe I could have stepped from one to the other within a radius of ten or fifteen feet. Among them I noticed the dead body of a magnificent looking man lying on his back with his eyes open, seemingly looking at the starry firmament. Noticing that he wore an officer’s suit, I turned up his collar which disclosed two stars, denoting his rank as lieutenant-colonel. I afterwards learned that he commanded a Tennessee regiment in Cheatham’s Division.
During the night an armistice was had by mutual consent, for the purpose of taking care of the wounded and burying the dead. We were ordered to destroy the small arms left on the field, which were very thick, by breaking the stocks on the trees, which job we soon abandoned because many of the guns were loaded. The batteries captured by our people were exchanged for our own guns, as we only had horses to carry off the number captured, leaving our inferior guns spiked on the field.
The battle of Perryville, for the number engaged, has always ranked as one of the most desperately fought battles of the war, equal to Shiloh, Chickamauga and others for desperate fighting, and which the respective losses of the two armies fully sustained.
The battle of Perryville proved such a blow to the Federal commander that it made him more cautious in his rapid advance. Our infantry during the night commenced their retreat with the wagon train, artillery and everything belonging to them, moving towards Harrodsburg, where we were met by General Kirby Smith and his army, coming back from Cincinnati. At this point we found a very large amount of pickled pork in barrels, that had been collected for removal with our army, but had to be abandoned and was largely destroyed by our cavalry, still covering the retreat, as heretofore.
The enemy at this point crowded us pretty close and came very near forcing a general engagement again, which no doubt would have proven disastrous to our arms, because they outnumbered us at least four to one. Our cavalry service continued to cover the retreat except with occasional branching out to different points where army supplies were stored, notably Lebanon, where I was sent with a detail of three others to a man’s house by the name of Penick, who had a large plantation and owned a great many negroes. He was said to have a great deal of bacon, which we were instructed to have carried to Lebanon. On arriving at the house I went in and told the gentleman our business. He met us in the hall, joined by his wife and daughter and in answer to our demand that he have his negroes hitch up his wagons and load the meat, he spitefully told us that he had hid out his mules, negroes and bacon and said, “Get it, if you can.” In reasoning with him, trying to persuade him that we would certainly find his hidden stuff, he became very insulting, when I finally told him he was taking advantage of us, knowing well that his gray hair and the presence of the ladies would protect him from our resenting his insults, but told him if he had any boys to bring them out and we would settle the matter with them pretty quick. He said, “I have two boys, but they are in the army and if ever they meet you, they will meet you like men.” I asked him what branch of the service they were in, when he told me they were in the cavalry. I then told him that we had a cavalry fight a couple of weeks before at Bardstown, where no doubt his boys were engaged, when on his further enquiry about the engagement, I told him how we scattered them all over the country, killing and wounding a great many. The ladies burst into tears and went back into their room, and the old man had nothing more to say about his boys.
I then again tried to persuade him to give us at least one wagonload of bacon, promising him that if he would send his team and a boy to drive it to Lebanon, he would surely have them returned, when he again refused in a spiteful, insulting manner. I told him that we had understood he had some six or eight yoke of work-oxen and in Texas we knew all about handling oxen and we would go into his pasture and drive them up and hitch them to the wagons that were at the house, but this was only a threat. We gave him up as a bad job and when we reached the pike about three miles from there, we met a citizen who told us that Wheeler’s cavalry had evacuated Lebanon and burnt all the meat stored there, which we were induced to believe, and decided to ride back to the Harrodsburg Pike and get with our command, which we did.
Our army then continued to retreat, the main part of the army moving towards Crab Orchard, where we struck the Cumberland Gap road, while the army, under Kirby Smith, was struggling over Big Hill, and had still to join the main army at the junction of the roads at Pitman’s. The army then moved into the mountains on the Cumberland Gap road, which, owing to the character of the country, was generally restricted to a single wagon track. This stretched out our columns of retreat for perhaps twenty miles or more and cut up the road very badly, frequently causing wagons to stall. Two infantrymen consequently were detailed with every wagon, of which we had thirty-eight hundred, laden with provisions and valuable stores. This detail of two with each wagon was ordered to assist any wagon that was stalled by taking hold of the wheels, thereby helping the team to pull the wagon out of the rut.