USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. I > Part 19
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General Polk looked with covetous eyes towards Paducah. Situated at the mouth of the Tennessee, and connected by railway with all the principal Southern railroads, its possession was invaluable. A large commerce had passed up the Ten- nessee-vast quantities of flour and bacon, ammunition, equipments and clothing had gone to the South by the rail- roads alone. It was necessary as a defence for the rear of his positions on the Mississippi. Twice he threw aside the dictates of prudence, and moved a large force forward with the purpose of laying hold on the place, but a sober second thought both times caused him to retreat.
Each side waited for the other to give the signal to step with armed men on Kentucky's soil. At last a move was made. On the 3d of September General Polk crossed the river from New Madrid, and with a large force took posses- sion of Hickman on the Mississippi, and of Columbus, also on the Mississippi, and about twenty miles below Cairo. Scarcely had General Polk thrown down the glove, when General Zollicoffer also made an advance, entering Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, in order to cut off from faithful East Tennessee its only mode of communication with the loyal States.
General Grant was not slow to accept the challenge of the Confederate Generals. The 6th of September, with two regiments and a battery, he seized Paducah, and thus block- aded one of the principal entrances into the Rebel States. Later in the month, Grant also blockaded the Cumberland, by taking possession of Smithland.
Between the removal of General Polk across the Missis-
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KENTUCKY FOR THE UNION.
sippi to Hickman and Columbus, and the advance of General Grant to Paducah, the Legislature of Kentucky passed the following resolutions:
" Resolved, That Kentucky's peace and neutrality have been wantonly violated, her soil has been invaded, and the rights of her citizens have been grossly infringed by the so- called Southern Confederate forces. This has been done without cause; Therefore,
" Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Common- wealth of Kentucky, That the Governor be requested to call out the military force of the State to expel and drive out the invaders.
" Resolved, That the United States be invoked to give that aid and assistance, that protection against invasion, which is guaranteed to each one of the States by the 4th section of the 4th article of the Constitution of the United States.
" Resolved, That General Robert Anderson be, and he is hereby, requested to enter immediately upon the active dis- charge of his duties in this military district.
" Resolved, That we appeal to the people of Kentucky, by the ties of patriotism and honor, by the ties of common in- terest and common defence, by the remembrances of the past, and by the hopes of future national existence, to assist in ex- pelling and driving out the wanton invaders of our peace and neutrality, the lawless invaders of our soil."
Governor Magoffin, with characteristic audacity, vetoed the resolutions, but they were passed over his veto by an overwhelming majority.
Forty thousand volunteers for the defense of the State and the Union were called out. Any volunteer Rebel was declared incapable of inheriting property in Kentucky. The State was now fully committed to the Union. General Anderson, known and honored as the commandant at Sumter at the time of the surrender of that fort, assumed command of the Department. Kentucky prejudices were still consulted, and General Anderson received the appointment mainly because he was a native Kentuckian.
General Thomas was sent to relieve Nelson of the care of Camp Dick Robinson, where were now more than six thousand
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Kentucky and Tennessee troops, and Nelson, commissioned General, was ordered to form another camp in the eastern part of the State, on the Big Sandy.
Before the meeting of the Kentucky Legislature, and be- fore the forward movements of Polk and Zollicoffer and Grant, the most active of the Kentucky Secessionists retired to Tennessee, from which General Buckner now moved towards Bowling Green, with nearly ten thousand men. Bowling Green, situated at the junction of two Kentucky railroads which enter Tennessee, possesses facilities for transportation to an almost unlimited extent, and being on the south bank of the Barren river, and almost encircled by hills, can be de- fended by a small force.
Buckner, however, did not desire merely to make a strong- hold at this point. He moved forward, rapidly, in order to insure secresy, towards Louisville. Further to insure that no intelligence of his movement might be carried to that city, he cut the telegraph wire and seized the upward-bound rail- way train.
The managers of the road, with no suspicion of danger, sent from Louisville another train to bring up the passengers, who, they supposed, were delayed by some accident. This was also seized, and, as it did not, of course, return, the man- agers, still unsuspecting, dispatched a single engine. This also was captured, but a single fireman escaped, and worked his way back on a hand car in time to give the alarm.
General W. T. Sherman, second in command to General Anderson, was immediately sent by the latter with orders to Colonel Rousseau to bring his men to the defence of Louis- ville. Sherman reached Rousseau's camp at nine o'clock in the evening. At once all was in motion. With speed and in silence the river was crossed, tents, camp-equipage and supplies being left behind for some cavalrymen, who, as yet, had no horses, to bring on the next day.
At midnight Colonel Rousseau's troops marched through Louisville. The rumbling of artillery wheels and the solemn tramp of the march rose and died away without exciting tumult or attention. The slumbering city was aware neither of its danger nor of its deliverance.
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ADVANCE AND RETREAT.
With the addition of a large portion of the city Home- Guards, the force proceeded down the road, under the general command of Sherman. The army thus hastily collected was small, and would, probably, have fared ill in an encounter with Buckner.
Happily there was to be no such premature trial of strength. A loyal young man of Bowling Green, a railroad official, hastened in advance of the Rebel army, and displaced a rail a few miles above that town. The engine, of course, ran off the track. Time was required to repair the road, replace the engine, and start the train again. General Buckner, in con- sequence, did not reach Elizabethtown until General Sherman was in position to offer battle. His heart then failed him at the prospect of the unexpected difficulties gathering in his front, and he went no further. He, however, employed agents to destroy a high bridge over the Rolling Fork of Salt river, in order to retard the progress of the Union force.
Contrary to his expectations the want of the bridge did not delay the Union force. When the command to cross was given, Rousseau rose in his saddle and, crying out, "Follow me, boys. I expect no soldier to undergo any hardship that I will not share!" sprang from his horse and waded the river. The men could scarcely have crossed as rapidly on a bridge as they followed him through water four and five feet deep.
Buckner retired before this rapid advance, and General Sherman established his camp on Muldraugh's Hills, a series of rugged elevations, forming the southern extremity of the plain on which Louisville is situated, and about three miles north of Elizabethtown, leaving guards at every important point in his rear. There he waited for the loyal border States to redeem their pledge.
General Buckner, also having his rear well guarded, slowly moved back to Bowling Green, which he immediately began to fortify.
Humphrey Marshall, in the eastern part of the State, col- lected a force, and appeared in front of General Nelson. General Zollicoffer threatened to approach General Thomas from the Cumberland river, in the southeastern extremity. His troops scoured south-central and southeastern Kentucky,
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
destroying the property of Union men, and evidently endeav- oring to advance to the blue-grass region, a wealthy district in the center and north, the owners of which, from the force of circumstances, being large slave holders, were generally Se- cessionists, and as generally men without principle.
Thus, with Marshall in the east, Zollicoffer in the south- east, Buckner in the south, on the Louisville and Nashville railroad, and Polk in the west, on the Mississippi, with Grant at Paducah, Sherman at Elizabethtown, Nelson in Mason county, Kentucky was walled in with soldiers. And not merely her border lines were in the possession of armies, armed forces were seated at her very heart.
When September came in there was not a single body of troops within all her borders, except a small unorganized force, half of Kentuckians, half of fugitive Tennesseans, at Camp Dick Robinson. Before September went out hills, fields and towns were alive with the thruming of martial music and the tramping of martial feet, and the neutral ground had become a field of Mars.
In October General Anderson's health failing, he was obliged to resign. General Sherman succeeded him in the care of the department.
General Sherman regarded Kentucky as a superintendent of police might look on a vast city bursting into blaze in a hun- dred different points. Resolved to master the flames before they should sweep together in one wide sea of fire, he plunged into business with all the energy of a strong, deep feeling soul; he infused into every worthy subordinate his own vigor, and he urgently called on the Government for more troops.
General Cameron and General Thomas, the two sedate visitors of General Fremont, returning from Missouri, called on Sherman at this juncture, and found him in this "noble rage."
"Come and see with how little capacity the world is gov- erned!" said Chancellor Oxenstiern once, in a candid and satirical moment. Through the centuries which have inter- vened, and which have illustrated the wisdom of the experienced Swedish minister, the saying points to the interview of the yet unknown American General with the well-known and
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" MOST POTENT, GRAVE AND REVEREND SEIGNORS."
aged American statesmen, whose opinion and whose word, weighty at all times in the Cabinet, were indubitable when founded on personal observation, and corroborated by the testimony of a military officer of years and experience. Sher- man's lean, long face, high head, and nervous, fretful manner impressed these censors; his sharp statement of the condition of affairs startled them; his gruff replies offended them; and they were thunderstruck by an earnest representation which he made of his need of two hundred thousand men. A mole and a bat, they sat in judgment on the course an eagle had out-lined for his career, and now sullenly submitted to their inspection. They shook their unwise heads over it; they pro- nounced it impracticable; they judged him insane, and with their budget made up, they proceeded on their way.
It was a peculiarity of General Cameron and General Thomas that before they presented their reports to the Presi- dent they allowed their opinions and the facts on which their opinions were founded to be spread abroad. The rumor of Sherman's insanity was like running fire. It was a new dis- aster heaped on an almost overwhelmed country. The West especially was alarmed. The fate of the Republic and the lives of the soldiers were more endangered by the caprices of a lunatic than by the ambition of a would-be despot. The public moreover believed Sherman crazy. There was no reason in this case to suspect the motives of the investigating committee. It was, therefore, with intense relief that intel- ligence of Sherman's resignation was received.
After the traduced and displaced Sherman, it was neither a sick man nor a crazy man, not even an earnest man, who was placed at the head of the Department. Don Carlos Buell probably had no hand in naming himself; his name, therefore, is not taken in account against him. He was born in Ohio, grew up in Indiana, was educated at West Point, and had served usefully in the army, with distinction in Mexico. His antecedents, so far as they were generally known, were all in his favor, and he was received with the prognostications of greatness and glory which ushered all our early Generals into lofty positions.
" The Department which General Buell received compre-
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hended the States of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, all of Ken- tucky lying east of the Cumberland river, and the State of Tennessee. The Department of Missouri, commanded by General Halleck, lay west of the Cumberland, and in the following March General Halleck's command was extended eastward to a north and south line passing through Knoxville. This command was called the Department of the Mississippi, and in June was made to include the whole of Kentucky and Tennessee. Until November 24, 1862, the title and limits of the District of the Ohio were retained."*
During October and November Federal and Rebel troops and stores continued to accumulate in Kentucky. According to the report contained in the Annual Cyclopedia for 1861, on the first of December the Federal troops in the State were estimated at seventy thousand, of which nine regiments were from Illinois, sixteen from Indiana, seventeen from Ohio, three from Pennsylvania, one from Michigan, three from Wiscon- sin, two from Minnesota, and at least twenty-five thousand of her own soldiers. The army was well appointed, and with batteries of artillery and squadrons of cavalry to give it greater efficiency.
* Annals of the Cumberland.
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HASTENING TO KENTUCKY.
CHAPTER XXI.
ADVANCE FROM LOUISVILLE TO MUNFORDSVILLE.
"Fifty years ago Kentucky at Tippecanoe saved the infant Territory of Indiana from the merciless tomahawk of the savage, and the bones of her sons repose upon that bloody field. Kentucky is now invaded, and asks In- diana to come to her rescue."-Normam Eddy to the Citizens of the Ninth Con- gressional District.
It was said in the previous chapter that General Sherman followed General Buckner to Elizabethtown, and there waited for the gathering forces of the neighboring States. They were not slow.
Indiana seemed ill prepared to give help to another. She was herself defenceless. Her regiments, as fast as they were formed, had been sent off, East and West. Her border had no fortifications, no forces, and not guns enough along the whole line to arm three thousand men. In the whole State there was not a piece of artillery larger than a six-pounder, and not a regiment fully armed and equipped.
Yet, even before General Sherman reached Elizabethtown, Indiana troops were swelling his numbers. As soon as Colo- nel Rousseau left Camp Joe Holt, Colonel Crittenden asked and obtained leave to move to the relief of Kentucky. Only about five hundred of his men were yet collected in Madison, and these were not uniformed, and not provided with tents. But on the day permission was received, which was also the day the regiment was re-organized for the three years' service, September 20th, it went down the river and marched through Louisville. The city, now thoroughly alarmed by Buckner's attempt to get it under Rebel rule, welcomed the Sixth with vehement demonstration. Thatthe Colonel was a Crittenden no doubt added to the warmth of the reception.
Whatever may be the faults of Kentucky, she can never be accused of ingratitude to her distinguished men. She
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
goes indeed to the other extreme, giving to a name such weight as to surprise the plain Hoosier, with whom "every tub stands on its own bottom." There is, however, something charming, something feudal-like, in this devotion of man to man, in this affection for a word. It is useful, too, when a Crittenden, or a Breckenridge, is on the right side.
Carrying a beautiful flag, the present of the beautiful Louisville ladies, and fired anew with patriotism by the aspect of helpless and trusting women and children, the Sixth has- tened forward, and encamped at Muldraugh's Hills on the 22d.
The Thirty-Eighth was but one day behind the Sixth. When orders to march were received it lacked two hundred and fifty of the full number, one hundred being absent from camp, and one hundred and fifty not being yet recruited. It was also entirely without equipments. But hastily and with difficulty procuring knapsacks and muskets, it started without delay. At Louisville it received cartridge boxes and belts. At Lebanon it obtained haversacks and canteens. At last fitted out, it arrived at the Rolling Fork, which it waded like its predecessors, although the water was waist deep, and very cold, and marching eighteen miles further it joined Rousseau's command.
The Colonel of the Thirty-Eighth, Benjamin F. Scribner, belongs to that class of men whose worth is best known by the vacancy their absence creates.
On the same day, immediately after the Thirty-Eighth, the Thirty-Ninth waded the formidable stream, and marched up the valley to Camp Muldraugh. It was welcomed with en- thusiasm to the post of honor and danger, and ordered almost immediately into line of battle, as the enemy was reported approaching. Buckner, however, did not make his appear- ance, and the soldiers, after their weary march, slept that night undisturbed on the ground and under the stars.
The Thirty-Ninth, from Colonel to drummer, was a splen- did regiment. The men were robust and vigorous to an unusual degree. At least twenty-five were each six feet or morein height. Captain Whitesell's company was from Ham- ilton county, chiefly from Wayne township, from which, out of two hundred and thirty-seven voters, at this early period
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THE THIRTY-NINTH.
of the war, one hundred and sixteen had been mustered into service.
Colonel Harrison was educated in Wabash College, an in- stitution which has been remarkably successful in infusing into the minds of its students serious and lofty views of duty. For many years he had been a successful lawyer in Kokomo. He was a Captain in the three months' campaign, as were also Lieutenant-Colonel Jones and Major Evans.
A military Masonic Lodge, under dispensation, was organ- ized and accompanied the regiment. J. C. Linsday, W. M., and M. Garrigus Secretary, both of Howard county.
The Thirty-Ninth received muskets and ammunition in Louisville, and fared sumptuously at the expense of the hos- pitable Kentuckians in the city, and on the way to Sherman's camp.
As communication with the North by rail was destroyed, there was some delay in the arrival of rations and tents. The men, meantime, spent the nights without shelter, and sub- sisted on fresh beef, bought of the country people, and apples, pears, persimmons and other fruits, which were abundant.
Troops poured in from almost every county in Kentucky, and regiments came rapidly from Ohio and Illinois.
The first of October General Sherman moved forward. Eight men of the Sixth Indiana, commanded by Captain P. P. Baldwin, entered Elizabethtown a mile in advance. For- tunately for this daring party, the Rebel rear had left the town a short time before.
At this time there was no definite military organization. All the regiments in Elizabethtown were in one brigade. When General Sherman was withdrawn to Louisville to suc- ceed General Anderson, Colonel Rousseau was promoted Brigadier General, and assumed command of this brigade. At this time the field and staff officers of the Sixth Indiana were elected. Colonel Crittenden had the confidence and affection of his men, and it was with satisfaction they saw him reinstated in the command.
The 7th of October General Rousseau moved on from Elizabethtown to Nolin, a station on the Louisville and Nash- ville railroad, fifty-three miles from Louisville.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Before he was encamped in Nolin he was reinforced by three more Indiana regiments-the Thirtieth, Twenty-Ninth and Thirty-Second.
The Thirtieth left Fort Wayne the 2d of October, amid waving of handkerchiefs, beating of drums, sobs and tears, blessings and prayers. It was detained a week in Indianapo- lis, where the regiment procured uniforms, and four companies were provided with Enfield rifles. The Colonel, Sion S. Bass, gave up a business which is one of the most lucrative of mechanical employments, that of machinest, and which he well understood, to undertake a work, of which, like the ma- jority of his coadjutors, he knew nothing. He was intelligent and energetic, and had a noble uprightness, which won the esteem and love of all who knew him. Uniting in himself the learner and teacher, he set to work with good will and good sense, and soon had both his men and himself in excel- lent training.
The Twenty-Ninth reported to Rousseau the day after the Thirtieth. It left LaPorte the 2d of October, without equip- ments. Four companies were armed and equipped in Indian- apolis, and six in Louisville. John F. Miller, the Colonel, a gentleman of modest and amiable disposition, and of fine culture, his native ability having had the training of travel, study and extensive reading, was a member of the State Senate, and had a good law practice, but he promptly relin- quished his practice, and resigned his seat in the Legislature, when he conceived it to be his duty to volunteer.
The Thirty-Second left Indianapolis the 28th of Septem- ber. As it marched through the streets on its way to the railroad, the steady, subdued, yet sturdy and manly bearing of the men elicited a degree of admiration greater than had been given to any other of the volunteers. Since the organ- ization of the regiment, August 24th, Colonel Willich, assisted by the subordinate officer and many of the men, who had re- ceived military instruction in Europe, had been indefatigable in camp drill.
Colonel Willich was selected by his countrymen for his present position as one of the most distinguished German exiles in America. He began his military career in the Prus-
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THE THIRTY-SECOND.
sian army as a Captain of artillery, but his sympathies were with the people, and at the breaking out of the Revolution of 1848 he espoused the cause of liberty, and became a Gen- eral in the service. In the United States he was for a time employed in the coast survey; afterwards in Cincinnati he edited a newspaper, which barely gave him support. On the formation of McCook's German regiment he received the appointment of Major; but, although several months in the service, he had not received pay, when he was removed to the Thirty-Second Indiana. His circumstances were so strait- ened that he had not the means to buy a horse, and when his regiment made its last parade in Indianapolis, to the surprise of the spectators, the Colonel accompanied it on foot.
In the Thirty-Second were twenty or thirty citizens of Tennessee. They had been forced into the Confederate army and had deserted. Making their way by night through northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky, sometimes on foot, some- times in wagons, which were furnished by Union citizens, they reached Indiana shortly before the completion of the German regiment. They were men of respectable standing and character, as Germans generally are, and they appreciated Liberty, Law and Union, as true Germans must .*
Passing through Madison and Louisville, the Thirty-Second went into camp near New Haven, Kentucky, where it re- mained a short time before moving towards Elizabethtown.
Colonel Willich formed a pioneer corps of forty of his men, providing them with wagons, and all the tools necessary for pioneer service. The bodies of the wagons were so con- structed that they could answer for pontoons in bridging small streams.
General Rousseau's brigade encamped on the farm of a Mr. Nevin, to whom the presence of United States troops
* Shortly before the outbreak of the rebellion in the United States, a vehe- ment appeal for a union of the German States appeared in a newspaper of Southern Germany. When the States were united, said the writer, when the government was one, Germany was the power of the world. Now, broken in pieces, ruled by a score of petty princes, who are jealous of each other, suspicious of the people, and afraid of neighboring nations, Germany is in- significant and contemptible. Union! Union! is the agonized cry of every true hoart from the Alps to the Sea!
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
was hateful. Returning good for evil, the soldiers gave his name to the camp.
October 11th a scouting party from the Thirty-Ninth In- diana was organized, under Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, to scour the country in advance. It numbered forty officers and men. On its first expedition it followed the railroad south fourteen miles on foot, when, about two o'clock, nearly one half the party stopped at two houses, which were close to- gether, on the side of the road, for dinner, the rest going on in quest of something to eat.
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