USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. I > Part 21
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The Thirty-Third encamped two miles south of Crab Orchard. It was scarcely established when Colonel Coburn received intelligence from the commander of the Kentucky troops, twenty-two miles beyond Crab Orchard, that they were in immediate danger of an attack from the whole of Zollicoffer's force, which was not more than eight or ten miles distant from their front. As it was impossible to move his regiment with rapidity over the mountain road, Colonel Co- burn procured all the horses he could find, only about forty, and with this number of mounted men hastened to the threat- ened point. At Rockcastle river Colonel Garrard met him, and represented that it might be possible to bring up his reg- iment in time for an encounter with the enemy, and that it was not possible for the Kentucky soldiers without aid to offer any resistance. He had but six hundred effective men, num- bers of his regiment being sick with measles, or from the ex- posure to which they were yet unaccustomed.
Accordingly Colonel Coburn went back, and as the Gov- ernment wagons which accompanied the regiment to Crab Orchard had returned to Dick Robinson, he impressed into the service the teams of neighboring farmers.
Early the next morning, Saturday, the 18th of October, eight companies, with baggage and ammunition, took up the
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WILD CAT.
line of march. They were overtaken by three hundred and fifty of Wolford's Kentucky cavalry, and by Brigadier Gen- eral Schoepf, a distinguished Hungarian exile, who, having entered the United States service, and having been ordered to Camp Dick Robinson, was by General Thomas directed to hasten forward and take command of the forces advanced towards Zollicoffer. With the utmost speed they were not able to reach the ground until Sunday afternoon.
The Seventeenth Ohio, which had had charge of an out- post to the left, had already arrived, and there were now nearly four regiments assembled in one of the most rugged spots among the Rockcastle hills. Colonel Garrard's encampment, which his men, with reference to the fierce aspect of the re- gion, called "Camp Wild Cat," was on an eminence a little west of the road. The Seventeenth Ohio was posted on another hill east of the road. Both positions commanded the road. Having approved of this disposition of the troops which had already arrived, General Schoepf divided the In- diana regiment into two parts, and sent four companies under Lieutenant-Colonel Henderson to a hill on the extreme right, a mile to the east of the camp; the remaining four companies he directed Colonel Coburn to lead to an eminence on the extreme left, a half mile southeast of the camp.
This latter hill was, perhaps, four hundred feet high, round, rough, steep and woody, with an open space of several acres on the top.
It was seven o'clock in the morning. Colonel Coburn, with Captains Dille, Hauser, McCrea and Hendricks, and with less than four hundred men, started immediately in a round trot across the ravine which lay between them and the point designated. Mounting the hill, Coburn deployed his men as skirmishers on the top, behind a slight breastwork of logs, and on the side among the trees.
In- twenty minutes the advanced troops of the enemy, who had also been racing for this point, began firing. One of the first bullets entered the breast of a private, Louis McFarren. Putting his hand on the wound, he said to his Captain, "They have killed me!"
Ten minutes after, the Confederates appeared in great num-
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA
bers a half mile to the south. They were a half hour passing an open space in the road. Very soon they drew near, under cover of a wood, which entirely concealed them until they were within a hundred and thirty yards of the hill top, when they began firing, at the same time filling the woods, which an hour before were utterly silent, with ferocious and deaf- ening yells. At this moment the round hill was reinforced by Colonel Wolford with two hundred and fifty of his cavalry, without their horses. The hot firing from Rebel guns, and still more the fearful screaming from thousands of Rebel throats, threw the new-comers off their guard. They wavered and turned to run. Colonel Wolford, Colonel Coburn, Cap- tain Dille and Adjutant Durham sprang before them, rallied them, and called their courage into action.
Suddenly the enemy leaving the cover of the woods charged boldly through a cornfield, up the hill. They were met and scattered by a galling fire. Rallying, they came up again, and after a furious fight of about an hour retreated, leaving on the field some of their dead and wounded.
About the close of the engagement four companies of the Seventeenth Ohio came on the hill, and eagerly formed in line of battle, pursuing the enemy with their fire.
As soon as the Confederates disappeared, the Union troops fell to work to fortify the hill, and they continued at the work during the greater part of the day and night, " slaying more timber in that time," the Kentuckians said, "than the whole State had cut down in a year."
About two o'clock another reinforcement was received-a company from the Fourteenth Ohio-and at the same time another unsuccessful attack was made by the enemy. Later the Fourteenth and Thirty-Eighth Ohio, the Tennessee regi- ments and Standart's battery arrived. Just as the heavy artillery was dragged up the hill, the enemy made the third and last approach. Three rounds from the battery drove him back.
All was now still until about two in the morning, when it was plain that Zollicoffer's camp was in motion. The troops in every quarter stood ready to receive him, but no demon-
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RESULT OF THE BATTLE.
stration was made. Daylight revealed the Confederates in rapid movement towards the South.
The Rebel loss was about one hundred. The Union dead and wounded about half as many.
The Kentuckians in the region reckoned the loss in the battle and on the retreat, during which Zollicoffer was repeat- edly fired on from the roadside by the exasperated mountain- eers who had suffered in his advance, at not less than one thousand. They were greatly excited, however, by the inva- sion, and, in the want of newspaper reports, heard with cre- dulity the exaggerations of rumor.
The battle of Wild Cat needed no alteration of circum- stances to make it a remarkable affair. In the first engage- ment six hundred raw troops, not one of whom, officers or men, excepting the Adjutant, had ever had either military experience or instruction, until within a month, drove back two complete regiments with almost no loss to themselves.
Zollicoffer's whole force consisted of six thousand infantry, sixteen hundred cavalry and one battery of artillery. The whole National force was two thousand two hundred infantry, three hundred and fifty cavalry and one battery of artillery.
It was the first battle in Kentucky, and, therefore, decided many who had been wavering.
The danger to Colonel Garrard's regiment had been sudden and imminent. The succor was prompt and complete. The blue-grass country was now, for a time, closed against attack, and safety was secured to central, northern and the greater part of southern Kentucky.
Colonel Coburn's conduct during the battle won the con- fidence of his men. "He always seemed so easy," said one of his soldiers afterward, "that I thought he would not be brave. But I tell you he showed himself clear grit." "I was skeered to death," added another; "I could have run behind wagons or anything, till I saw the Colonel's face. Something there put the spirit into me. All the time the bullets were whistling and whizzing and tearing every way, not minding a bit who they hit, he walked round just as cool as anything. Only his eyes fairly blazed."
While he was rallying the flying Kentuckians, it is said that
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Colonel Coburn found a number skulking behind a stump. « Pile out! Pile out, boys," he cried ; " it don't take seventeen men to guard a black stump."
The Adjutant also distinguished himself. Captain Hauser had a finger shot ; he ran to the surgeon, had it amputated, and hastened back to the field.
Colonel Coburn complimented in his report all the Captains engaged, and the men as not less brave.
One of the privates, Jacob Memherter, gained a nickname which stuck to him. He stationed himself, in the heat of the engagement, behind a log, and did much execution with his rifle. He was peeping over, taking aim, when a bullet struck the log a few inches from him, knocking dust and splinters in his face. "Bully for Jake!" he said, and coolly took an- other position. Bully-for-Jake, as the man was afterwards called, was a brave soldier, except when he met with the bottle.
One of the prisoners was wounded mortally in the head. He refused the food offered him, fancying it was poisoned, and spent every painful breath he drew in cursing the aboli- tionists. Such an exhibition of hatred was then novel, and excited much attention and conversation.
Another prisoner, after a month or two in the hospital, de- clared he " never would have fit if he had known the war wasn't made by abolitionists to take the niggers away." This. last man had a splendid physical development, but was an utter animal. With his sharp eyes glancing out from his bushy hair and beard, his wide, distended nostrils, and his quick, watchful motions, his head looked like that of an in- telligent and hungry dog. He refused the offer of a good- natured Union soldier to teach him to read, while he was in the hospital, and seemed quite resigned to a crippled and ignorant life, though he was not more than twenty-five years old. Brutal and bloated he was a disgusting and melancholy spectacle of uninformed, undeveloped manhood; secession ladies came to visit him, threw their arms round him and kissed him for what he had suffered in the cause of slavery.
General Zollicoffer's troops did not rest until eighteen miles were between them and their foes. An immediate pursuit
249
CUMBERLAND GAP EXPEDITION.
would have destroyed them; but it was not practicable, as all the men at Wild Cat, except Colonel Garrard's six hun- dred, had reached the scene of action only by forced marches, and were now so exhausted that rest was an absolute neces- sity. No long stay, however, was made. A week after the battle General Schoepf's brigade, which was the whole force at Wild Cat, moved towards Cumberland Gap. But, on ar- riving at London, it was again exhausted, and again rest was an absolute necessity. No class of men in the brigade was so worn out as were the young men from farms. Being un- used to irregular hours, to exposure, to privation or over toil, accustomed to homes than which none in the land were more comfortable, and to tables bountifully spread, they had little power of endurance. Many also were now for the first time exposed to diseases to which the inhabitants of cities are sub- jected in childhood. The number of sick became very large, in several regiments amounting to one hundred, in the Thirty- Third to one hundred and eighty-nine, and the halt in London was prolonged a month. The little town with the encamp- ments round it seemed to be one great hospital. To add to the discomfort supplies were scarce, as roads were almost too bad to allow of transportation, and the country was too poor to furnish anything.
Great numbers of heroic Unionists from East Tennessee, among them preachers, judges, legislators and Congressmen, joined the troops in London. Led to believe, by the victory at Wild Cat, and by successes which General Nelson had gained in the extreme eastern part of Kentucky, that Gen- eral Schoepf's brigade would soon enter Tennessee, they had stolen over the mountains, hunted on the way like wolves, a reward offered for their scalps, their comrades shot dead in their tracks, to hasten the Union advance. Their hearts were on fire, and they urged and entreated that there might be no delay. As the time dragged its slow length along, they impatiently repeated, " Must we forever stay and guard Ken- tucky? Shall we never go back to our homes, to our un- protected families? Wait to be disciplined! Wait to be drilled! How can men, smarting under every insult and injury that can be heaped upon them, quietly submit to learn
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
discipline and drill?" With their faces towards their native mountains, these men, penniless, sick and in rags, earnestly and solemnly affirmed they would go back no further; they would wait little longer; they would advance alone if the Union army would not advance with them.
One Sunday evening, to a home-sick group which sur- rounded him, a Tennessee Captain read aloud from the sixty-eighth Psalm: "God setteth the solitary in families, He bringeth out those which are bound with chains; but the rebellious dwell in a dry land." No honest soul can resist the marvellous sweetness of Scripture, and the words were balm.
Early in the evening of November 13th, after the sick, on their heaps of straw, for they had no beds, were prepared for the night, and while the well, or the so-called, around their camp-fires were talking and coughing, orders were received for an immediate march. The sick were included. The bag- gage and stores, such as could not conveniently be carried, were to be left ..
In the camp orders to march were construed as orders to advance, perhaps to an immediate attack on Zollicoffer; in consequence preparations were made with alacrity, especially by the Tennesseeans, eager to return to the rescue or the sup- port of their families. The brilliant engagement at Wild Cat encouraged them to hope for another and a decisive victory, one that would force the arbitrary and cruel Rebel authorities in East Tennessee to leave the State.
But in the hospitals, where nearly a thousand sick were hurriedly rolled up, and packed in the clumsy hearse-like am- bulances, and in open wagons, the order was understood, and was explained only by the supposition that the enemy, near at hand, was ready to swoop down and annihilate the brigade. Notwithstanding this supposition, earnest remonstrances against the movement were made. The surgeons entreated that the very sick might be left behind. In vain; orders were imperative; and all were prepared but a few who were near death. These unhappy men entreated their comrades not to abandon them, and watched the arrangements for departure with agonized eyes.
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THE DEAD MARCH.
Before the troops were fairly off they began to understand the order, and to denounce the movement. The Tennesseeans showed a mutinous spirit. They asserted that they would not give up a foot of the ground that had been conquered; that their families were dying of starvation; that they would desert; they would go back to Tennessee at all hazards; they would no longer be tampered with. Some of these poor exiles threw themselves on the ground weeping with vexation and grief.
The Fourteenth Ohio moved off first, its band playing " The Dead March." The Seventeenth Ohio fell in behind, and, when the band ceased, struck up a paraphrase of a song which was impromptu at Wild Cat. One verse of the ori- ginal is,
" Old Zollicoffer can't take us, Can't take us, can't take us, On a long summer's day."
On the present occasion it was sung: " Old Zollicoffer can't catch us, Can't catch us, can't catch us, 'Cause we're running away."
Each regiment was followed by its baggage and procession of invalids. The Tennesseeans at last fell in behind the Sev- enteenth Ohio, some saying they would follow the flag where ever it went, but adding, "It's hard on Tennesseeans, boys;" some swearing fiercely, others pale and silent. In the first four miles more than a hundred left the ranks, insensible to exhortations or threats, and, weeping or sullen, stood and watched the lumbering train.
The Thirty-Eighth Ohio followed. The Third Kentucky refused to move. The Thirty-Third Indiana brought up the rear. Next to the Tennesseeans, the Indianians formed the most mournful part of the procession. No band, and no sing- ing, no joking, and no talking, were heard in their ranks. The great number of sick depressed the spirits of all. Their blankets, made by dishonest contractors, half of cotton, were double the proper weight. On the best of roads, and in the best of circumstances, they would have been heavily loaded. As it was, after the first hour, their weariness was sufficient to warrant a halt. But on they trudged till, near daylight, they
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
overtook their more cheerful Ohio comrades, who had been resting since midnight.
The weather, which, during the past month, had been fair and warm, turned cold in the night, and a steady, chilling November rain began to fall. The soldiers were roused from their tired sleep to find their blankets, clothing and knapsacks saturated with water.
Rockcastle river, just north of Wild Cat, was swollen by the rain, and the soldiers of the Thirty-Third were obliged to stand in mud which was over their shoe-tops, sometimes up to their knees, until evening, when their turn came to cross. Rain all the time poured down, and the sick lay in their wet blankets, or sat in pools of water which had dripped from their clothes. Their beds that night were in the mud, with only the rainy sky above them.
The sun came out the next day, but the tramp was still through cold November mire. The soldier's life is a life of hardship; yet few days have ever seen so worn and pale a multitude of armed men as were on the march this day. Here and there a soldier sat, with livid lips and closed eyes, on a log, or on the ground, leaning against a tree or fence for rest Colonel Coburn walked much of the way, to let others ride his horse. The officers were all kind, refusing even to see insubordination.
In the evening of November 15th, with the sick now num- bering two hundred and fifty, the wretched Thirty-Third reached the old camping ground, and again slept without tents, and in the cold and damp.
The Ohio troops, starting in advance, in better spirits, with a smaller number of sick, in better general health, and reach- ing the point of destination first, suffered neither the physical nor mental prostration which reduced the Indiana regiment to the verge of destruction. The Tennessee soldiers showed so mutinous a spirit that they were allowed to return after they had marched twenty-four miles.
The order for retreat was occasioned by a report which reached General Schoepf that General Johnson was advanc- ing rapidly from Bowling Green with a force that would de- stroy him. There was not a shadow of a foundation for the
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CRAB ORCHARD A HOSPITAL.
report. Not only no movement was made from Bowling Green towards the East, but Zollicoffer was actually running away at the same time that our forces were hurrying off in the opposite direction.
In the battle of Wild Cat the Thirty-Third lost but five, while, as the immediate result of this retreat, between fifty and sixty of the regiment died; and before the next summer a large but unknown number from disease occasioned by the retreat. Their graves are among those desolate Kentucky hills, in the little lonesome town of Crab Orchard, and in many an Indiana grave-yard.
Crab Orchard became a general hospital. The taverns were full of the siek, the cottages around the springs, the school house, the two churches and many private houses. The encampments all resounded with a hoarse, hollow, heavy coughing, which he who heard can never forget. One made a sorry jest of it, saying "they coughed by platoons, in volleys rattling quick and hollow, like the musketry at Wild Cat." Colonel Coburn, after a few days' absence, returned to find more than five hundred of his men sick, and but few more than one hundred fit for duty.
" When he went round among the boys," said one of his soldiers afterwards, "and saw how they were lying on heaps of straw, with nothing, not the smallest thing, to make them comfortable, lying and dying that way, he just cried like a child."
Unfortunately, the Colonel himself was taken down with typhoid fever, and lay long at the point of death. The sur- geons and all the officers were most kind and attentive to the sick; the men who acted as nurses did what they could to alleviate suffering. The people of Crab Orchard, the few · that are patriots, and some ladies in the country, in the course of time, gave food, clothing and beds. Mrs. Henderson, the wife of the Lieutenant-Colonel, Mrs. Captain Hendricks, and, before the illness and after the recovery of her husband, Mrs. Coburn devoted themselves to the sick. But for many weeks their presence and their labor was all they could give, with such of their clothing as they could tear up for bandages, pillow-cases, sheets and towels.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Crab Orchard was so out of the line of direct communica- tion with any place of importance, that it was after the middle of December when the condition of the Thirty-Third became known. Every church in Indiana then put up prayers for our brave, suffering men. Individuals went from several towns for their relief, among them Dr. Wright, of Martins- ville, whose kindness and patience were inexhaustible. Great quantities of comforts and delicacies were sent by ladies from various points.
In the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis the minister on Sunday read a request from the Chaplain of the Thirty-Third for several hundred hymn books and Cromwell Bibles. A voice in the gallery answered, "The amount is subscribed." The gentleman who spoke went the next day to Cincinnati, roused the publishers at night, bought and packed and sent off the books before light.
Miss Bettie Bates, who afterwards spent many months in military hospitals, and whose name is now a familiar and be- loved word to hundreds of veteran soldiers, went to the Thirty- Third on her first pilgrimage of relief to the suffering. Bred in ease and indulgence, yet forbidden by an over-fond father to exercise her talent in a congenial way, she had hitherto been afflicted with nothing to do, and had felt herself "carried on a cushion with hands and feet bound." Her father's consent was now gained, and with great boxes of bedding, clothing, fruits, books and pictures, but with nothing so good as her own hands and feet, her sharp wit and her generous purse, she hastened gladly to her work.
The fathers and brothers of the sick soldiers, however anxious they might feel, were bound to their homes by double care since the war commenced; yet some, who seldom left their farms, and had never been out of their native State, found their way now to the hills of Kentucky.
The midnight coach of Crab Orchard brought a plain, old farmer, whose son had long been ill. In answer to a timid inquiry, the father was relieved to hear that the invalid was still living. In the morning, bright and early, he presented himself at the door of the cottage in which his boy lay. On the bed was a breathing skeleton. Was that the boy who so
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SOLDIER NURSES,
strong and hearty left his home not four months before? The old man scarcely knew. Afflicted and bewildered, he dropped on his knees by the bedside. But the sick eyes knew him, the emaciated arms found their way to his neck, and a feeble voice stammered, " I never knew before how good it was to have a Pap!"
" My brother has come!" eagerly exclaimed one who had been at death's door, but was recovering, to one of the ladies who waited on him. His eyes filled with tears as he added, "He's the poorest brother I've got, too. I'll remember it of him the longest day I live."
Want of physical strength seemed to intensify feeling. The patient sufferers embraced in their affection all that had been part of their past. The dear, old State of Indiana represented to them all which was good and beautiful. "You ought not to eat that jelly," a nurse said, in surprise, to one who, with pain and difficulty, was swallowing spoonfuls of jelly, administered by a brother fresh from home. "Oh, let me," entreated the sick man; "it was sent to me from old Indiana!" In his beloved Indiana his poor body now rests, sleeping the long, painless sleep of death.
The men, who were detailed to act in the capacity of nurses, were as gentle and tender and patient as brothers. It was affecting to see robust, sturdy arms, all unused to tendance on the sick, wrapped round a feeble creature whose face was wan and worn, and whose fingers were like birds' claws, the sturdy arms striving to ease the poor back which had so long ached on hard straw; to see broad, healthy hands smoothing the hair, or softly bathing the pallid faces of the dying, and to hear rough voices, toned down to womanly softness, speak of mother or sister, or of the blessed Saviour of sinners.
These kind nurses slept on the bare floor or pew without pillow or blanket, and day and night breathed the poisoned hospital air, even eating their plain meals in a corner of the church or large room which held the sick.
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