George B. Hodge

“ Breckinridge, in exile with saddened eyes, strives through the mists of the great lakes of the north, to catch some glimpse of the land he loved so fervently and served so faithfully. Of their less distinguished comrades, hundreds are lying all along the route of the sad retreat from Bowling Green, consigned to unconsecrated earth, their requiem the sighs of their sorrowing comrades. Many are resting by the lonely banks of the Tennessee and beneath the deep shadows of the tropical foliage of Baton Rouge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In truth, history records no sadder tale than the retreat of the Kentuckians from their native State. For the rest of the army there was yet hope. Far to the South lay their homesteads, and their families rested still in security. Between those homesteads and those families and the advancing foe were innumerable places where battle might be successfully offered, or where at least the sons of the South might rear a rampart of their bodies over which the invader could not pass. ”

“ 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 [Pg 25] stream, a disorganized and terror-stricken mob, while its dead and wounded lay in thousands for miles behind the Confederate army. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the 13th of February the brigade crossed the line between Kentucky and Tennessee; a night in which rain and sleet fell incessantly was succeeded by a day of intense and bitter cold. Everything which could contribute to crush the spirits and weaken the nerves of men, seemed to have combined. ”

“ The ascent of the plateau, although only about two miles of distance, consumed a day for each brigade, and time was everything to men in their condition; yet steadily, earnestly, hopefully, they toiled on until, on the 10th of March, the head of the army had reached a point within three miles of Decatur, but with the Tennessee swollen far beyond its banks, flooding the country for miles in every direction, and sweeping with resistless force over the roads and fords. Happily, at this point, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad crossed the Tennessee ”

“ State after State might have to be traversed, great rivers might have to be passed, mountain ranges surmounted, hunger and thirst endured, but the day and the hour would surely come when with serried ranks they should meet the foe, and their hearts burning with the memory of inexpiable wrongs, should, in the presence of the God of battles, demand and exact a terrible reckoning for all they had endured and all they had suffered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Troops were left in the city by order of Gen. Johnston, but the mob spirit rose triumphant. For many days the store-houses of the government stood open and abandoned by their proper custodians. Every one was at liberty to help himself to what he desired; and it may well be supposed that the thousands who crowded the streets were not slow to avail themselves of the privilege. ”

“ The night of February 16th found the army encamped safely upon the Murfreesboro and Nashville road; but it found the city of Nashville in a condition of wild and frantic anarchy.
The Capital of Tennessee, Nashville, contained, ordinarily, a population of about 30,000 souls. The revolution had made it the rendezvous of thousands fleeing from Kentucky, Missouri, and Western Virginia. So great was the throng of strangers, that lodging could be with difficulty procured at any price. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They will sleep none the less tranquilly in their quiet and unmarked graves because the dear land for whose deliverance they fought so long and so well, is ground by the heel of centralized power. Some survive, their mutilated forms monuments of a heroism which would have illustrated the days of Bayard or of Coeur de Lion. The memory of neither the living nor the dead “will be rendered infamous” until the peoples of the earth have ceased to honor manliness of spirit, freedom of thought, and heroism of deeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When it was evident that the Legislature of Kentucky had sold and bartered [Pg 28] 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. ”

“ Buell which had now occupied Nashville, but it was well known that none of the force occupied in the reduction of Donelson had ascended the river. With unlimited supplies of water transportation, nothing was easier than for them to pass round the peninsula, and, ascending the Tennessee river, land a force in his rear and place him in the same dilemma from which he had just so skillfully extracted his army. A retreat behind the Tennessee was inevitable, and the strategical position he occupied at Murfreesboro opened to him three routes. ”

“ Tender and delicate women, feeble and carefully nurtured children, were to be found, exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, in open carts and wagons, abandoning luxurious and costly houses for the precarious sustenance of doubtful and uncertain charity in their flights. Nor was the disgraceful panic confined to non-combatants or timid citizens. Men who had gained high reputation for courage and presence of mind seemed to have ignored every sentiment of manliness in their indecent haste to secure safety ”

“ 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. ”

“ Months must elapse before the advancing columns of the enemy could reach the South, and ere that time arrived pestilence and malarious disease would, amid the fens and swamps of the gulf States, be crouching in their lair, ready to issue forth and grapple with the rash intruders from a more salubrious clime. ”

“ Never able to wield more than eighteen thousand fighting men at and around Bowling Green, with these men he held at bay a force of the enemy of fully one hundred thousand men. The Southern States were protected from invasion. Time was obtained to drill and consolidate the volunteer force. The army was sustained in the fertile and abundant grain-producing regions of Kentucky, transportation gathered of the most efficient character, immense supplies of beef, corn, and pork collected from the surrounding country and safely garnered in depots further South for the coming summer campaign ”

“ Their countrymen might never know how they had lived or where they had died; venal historians might even teach the rising generation to brand their memories with the stigma of treason and shame, but a day was yet to come of the triumph of which they felt they could not be deprived ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were all Kentuckians, and although it was not their privilege to fight that day with the Kentucky Brigade, they were men who knew how to die bravely among strangers, and some, at least, [Pg 23] would live to do justice to the rest. The Commander-in-Chief, General Albert Sidney Johnston, rode up at this juncture, and learning the contemplated movement, determined to accompany it. Placing himself on the left of Little’s regiment, his commanding figure in full uniform, conspicuous to every eye, he waited the signal. ”

“ 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, [Pg 24] that charge must be successful. The last vision which fell upon his glazing sight was the flying ranks of the enemy ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lying, for the most part, through cultivated and deep bottoms, on the edge of Northern Alabama, it rises abruptly to cross the great plateau thrown out from the Cumberland Mountains, here nearly a thousand feet above the surrounding country, and full forty miles in width, covered with dense forests of timber, yet barren and sterile in soil, and wholly destitute of supplies for either man or beast. ”

“ P. Trabue, Colonel of the 4th Kentucky and senior Colonel of the brigade. During the whole of that bloody day, from 9 o’clock, when it became engaged, it maintained the reputation of its native State, and slowly but surely pushed back the force opposed to it. It never gave way or was broken, though terribly cut to pieces; it never charged that it did not break the ranks of the army; and it was found, when the action closed in the evening, after ten hours of continuous fighting, in the front rank of the army. It will be necessary to refer more particularly to its movements as we progress. ”

“ Every house was filled and overflowing, boarding was held at fabulous prices, and private citizens whose wealth would, under most circumstances, have secured their domesticity from intrusion, were, perforce, compelled to accommodate and shelter strangers whom the misfortunes of exile and persecution had thrown upon the world. ”