Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Orphan Brigade

by Lot D. Young

Meantime the "Orphans" were on the move toward the front and facing the enemy's moving column on the Chattanooga road, which led to Rossville and near Glass' Mill, at which place the artillery of Breckinridge's division, commanded by the gallant Major Graves, engaged the enemies in one of the fiercest artillery duels it was my pleasure to witness during the war. I say pleasure advisedly, for it was a magnificent sight to see from where I was stationed Graves moving among his men and directing their every action, which was done with an admirable celerity and precision that was perfectly charming. I must here do Graves the honor to say that he was the most perfect military man I ever saw. But this was but the prelude to the play of the morrow; both parties seeming (after a half hour's engagement) to say we will settle tomorrow. "Sunday is a better day."

Shifting our position to Lee and Gordon's Mill, further down the Chickamauga, in the afternoon, we here awaited developments and that night made a long detour and crossed at Alexander's Bridge, several miles down the river. Next morning we found ourselves on the extreme right of the dividing line of the stage of action marked out by the respective commanders for the grand tragedy that day to be enacted upon the stage of war. Early, very early the Fourth Kentucky Skirmishers (and I here glory in the fact) had the honor of firing the first shots in the opening that day of the greatest battle ever fought on the American continent, if not the greatest in modern times. This assertion may be called in question by critics, but if I mistake not there were more men killed and wounded at Chickamauga than in any other engagement of the war.

Here the old and somewhat sacrilegious saying of "Hell broke loose in Georgia" was fully and forcefully emphasized by the almost continuous thundering of 200 cannons that made the very earth tremble, besides the constant rattle of musketry and the shouts of more than a hundred thousand struggling combatants determined on each other's destruction. Americans all, and all for what? That a God-made inferior race might occupy the same plane with the superior was the object of one, while that right was disputed by the other. But I fear I may be digressing somewhat from the original purpose in these chapters. Still these thoughts are hard to suppress. Reviewing the incidents of the great battle and the part played by Kentucky Confederates I return to the skirmish line of the Fourth Kentucky, which covered the front of the Orphan Brigade and which was commanded by Col. Joe Nuckols, who was wounded at the very outset of the engagement and compelled to leave the field.

The writer was the subject at this particular time and place of the most ridiculous and practical joke of his entire war experience, but which (thanks to the Bill of Rights) he is not here compelled to relate. This was the beginning of that chapter in the history of the Orphan Brigade, which took the lives and blood of so many noble Kentuckians to write. In the first and desperate onset, led by the noble and intrepid Helm, whose name is a household word with almost all Kentuckians, fell here, together with Graves, Hewitt, Dedman, Daniel, Madeira and other officers of the line, and many splendid men of the Second and Ninth Regiments, who paid with their lives tribute to Mars and added to Kentucky's old traditional glory and renown.

Three regiments on the right, Fourth, Sixth and Forty-First Alabama, swept everything before them—the enemy being in the open field. But the Second and Ninth encountered the enemies' breastworks and were repulsed with terrible slaughter. Here was where the officers just mentioned fell in one of the most desperate struggles of the day. Here "Pap Thomas'" veterans took advantage of their works and exacted deep and merciless toll. More than once during the day was this position assailed by other bodies of Confederates with similar results. About the middle of the afternoon the assembling of Cheatham's and Walker's division in conjunction with Breckinridge warned us that the fatal moment had arrived and the hour of desperation was at hand.

The old veteran needs no one to tell him when a crisis is approaching, he instinctively and otherwise comprehends the meaning of these movements and nerves himself for the desperate work before him. His countenance would convince the stoic of what his mind contained, in modern parlance he "understands the game." When the signal gun was fired we knew its meaning, so also did the enemy. Then three lines in solid phalanx, desperate and determined men, moved forward on the Federal stronghold to be met by a withering and blighting fire from the enemy behind their works. But so furious and desperate was the onslaught that Thomas' veterans, who had withstood all previous attempts to dislodge them, could no longer face the line of gleaming bayonets of the Confederates as they leaped over the breastworks the Federals had so successfully defended up to that hour.

Some surrendered, others made their escape and still others met their doom—many, not hearing the shouts of the victorious Confederates as they rushed over and among them.

This was the culmination of the struggle. Similar movements with similar results were taking place simultaneously all along the line, closing the most stupendous struggle of the war. But at this particular point and at Snodgrass Hill, where the Fifth Kentucky contributed additional and unsurpassed glory to Kentucky's part in the great battle, were the keys to Rosecrans' position, and here the fighting was the hardest and the losses heaviest.

In the first charge in the morning where the right of the brigade was so successful, we captured a section of the enemy's artillery. The writer seized the trunnion of one of the guns and with assistance turned it on them while the other was turned by others of our men; but we could find no ammunition to fire them and were deprived of the anticipated glory of firing on the enemy as they fled from the field. I wish here, and in my feeble way, to lift my hat to do honor to the gallantry of the captain commanding that battery (who I learned was from Indiana) as doing the most daring and chivalrous act I ever saw performed by an enemy during my entire war experience. Both his lieutenants and a number of his men having been killed before he abandoned his guns, which were in a battery just on the West side of the Chickamauga road and in the face of us Confederates, who had reached the East side of the road, he dashed into the road and past us, lifting his hat and waving us a salute that would have put to shame a Chesterfield or a Prince Rupert. The act was almost paralyzing and not a man of the fifty or more who fired at him point blank touched him or his horse. If there is such a thing as a charmed life, this captain must have possessed it on that occasion. If living I would gladly travel miles to shake his hand.

Our next move was to unite our separated line which we did by retiring later on to the point from where we started.