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HISTORY OF THE 3d, 7th, 8th and 12th KENTUCKY C. S. A.
Henry George
Gc 973.74 K41g 1624426
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01083 8511
History of the 3d, 7th, 8th and 12th Kentucky C. S. A.
BY
HENRY GEORGE
May, 1911
MULL-WATHEN HISTORIC PRESS LYNDON, KY. 40222
Reprinted Through The Courtesy Of The Filson Club, Louisville, Ky.
December, 1970
This Edition Limited To 500 Copies
No
1624426
HENRY GEORGE.
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012
http://archive.org/details/historyof3d7th8t00geor
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Constitutional Rights to Secede, including the Origin of the Negro II
Traffic
CHAPTER II.
Organization of the Third and Eighth Kentucky; Their Move- ment up to and Including the Battle of Fort Donalson and Shiloh 19
CHAPTER III.
Organization of the Seventh Kentucky; Their Movement up to and Including the Battle of Shiloh. 27
CHAPTER IV.
Operations About Corinth; Movement Back to Tupelo and on to Vicksburg 33
CHAPTER V.
Movement South Under John C. Breckinridge; Battle of Baton Rouge, and Occupancy of Port Hudson. 36
CHAPTER VI.
Movement in the North Mississippi under Van Dorn. Price and Van Dorn Unite Their Commands and Make an Unsuccessful Attack on the Federals under Rosecrans at Corinth.
47
CHAPTER VII.
Movement in Front of Grant; Holly Springs, Grenada and Talla- hatchie, Back to Vicksburg; Big Black and to the Battle of Baker's Creek
54
CHAPTER VIII.
Mistakes of Pemberton. General Joseph E. Johnston, at Jackson, Moved to Big Black in Rear of Grant; Fell Back to Jackson, Where There Was Some Fighting; Moved Back to Meridian ; Moved to Canton, Where They Remained During the Winter. Organization of the Twelfth Kentucky, and the Battle of Okolona 64
CHAPTER IX.
Kentuckians Mounted and Put Under Forrest; Moved North Through Tennessee ; Captured Union City and Attacked Pa- ducah. Command Visited Their Homes First Time in Three Years or Since the War Commenced. 74
CHAPTER X.
Brice's Cross-Roads, the Most Brilliant Victory of the War; It Has No Parallel. 87
CHAPTER XI.
PAGE
Battle of Harrisburg, Miss. Federals, under A. J. Smith, about Fifteen Thousand Strong; Confederates, about Seven Thou- sand Strong, under S. D. Lee. Illy Advised and Badly Man- aged by the Confederates 98
CHAPTER XII.
Operations about Oxford and Memphis II2
CHAPTER XIII.
Forrest's Raid or Campaign into Middle Tennessee. Capture of Athens, Sulphur Springs Trestle and Engagement about Pu- laski. Recrossing the Tennessee River in the Face of a Large Force of the Enemy. Johnsonville Affair. Capture of Steamers
119
CHAPTER XIV.
Hood's Campaign to Nashville. Federal Army Escapes from Co- lumbia. Battle of Franklin. Forrest at Murfreesboro. Re- pulse and Retreat of Hood's Army from Nashville. Forrest Covering Retreat
I3I
CHAPTER XV.
From Montevallo to Selma.
I39
CHAPTER XVI.
Biographical Sketches 146
Edward Crossland
I46
Hylan B. Lyon.
Virgil Y. Cook. 147
147
Abram Buford 148
Charles Wickliffe 149
Albert P. Thompson 150
Daniel R. Merritt. 15I
Charles F. Jarrett. 15I
G. A. C. Holt. 152
Henry S. Hale. I53
Robert A. Browder I54
J. A. Collins. I54
Henry George 155
MUSTER ROLL OF KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS, C. S. A.
Eighth Regiment Infantry. I57
Third Regiment Mounted Infantry 163
Twelfth Regiment Cavalry. 175
Seventh Regiment Mounted Infantry 182
WOMEN OF THE SOUTH. 191
SOURCES OF INFORMATION 193
PREFACE.
Histories of war are always attractive and fascinating to the human mind. With all its horrors and ravages, it ever appeals to the admiration and sympathetic emotion of mankind.
No war which covered a period of four years ever witnessed so many battles or was marked by such tremendous mortality as was that between the States. The seven hundred thousand men who fell in that gigantic struggle attest the terrible determination of the combatants on either side. The war lasted 1,530 days, and five hundred men died on every day of this lengthened period. These were the offerings North and South tendered in the conflict for that which they deemed right.
It required one-third of a century for the men who participated in the war to settle the questions its political calamities presented, and then there came up from the South the demand that the true history of the great conflict should be written. The story of what the soldiers on both sides did must ever be full of interest and pathos. Such a tre- mendous tragedy could only find a full report in countless pages of print, and the recitals of those who participated in such awful scenes will ever awake keenest interest with the American people. No war ever developed so much in the three branchs of army organization. The rapid movements of artillery, the tedious marches and unparalleled mortality of the infantry and the long and successful raids of the cav- alry in either army, will ever attract the attention of military students and find eager study in men of every calling.
Cavalry in this conflict performed more arduous service and ac- complished greater results than had ever marked its use in any pre- vious war. The raids of Morgan, Forrest, Stuart, Wheeler and Hamp- ton in fierceness of battle and demands of endurance on protracted marches, were something new in the history of this department, and the introduction by General Morgan of the system by which cavalry were dismounted and fought as infantry, created a new field for this arm of the service, and at once arrested the examination and study of military men in all parts of the world.
Stuart died in May, 1864; Morgan followed him in September of the same year. These men had exemplified all that was gallant and glorious in war and met a soldier's fate with noblest courage and resig- nation. Both had great opportunities and both improved their oppor- tunities with grim determination and unfaltering zeal.
To Nathan Bedford Forrest, fate dealt a kindlier measure. This untutored soldier-all things considered, and, judged by his opportuni- ties, the greatest cavalry soldier the war produced-was yet to achieve his most magnificent victories and stamp his name in brilliant colors upon the pages of history.
Between the death of Stuart, in May, 1864, and Morgan, in Sep- tember, 1864, Forrest fought and won the greatest purely cavalry vic- tory of the war-or the world-Brice's Cross-Roads.
In this battle Kentuckians were to play a distinguished and valor- ous part. The Kentucky brigade, under Lyon, was composed of men who had come through the fiercest of military experiences and who from the inception of hostilities in 1861 had been educated by the most strenuous privations to the dangers and horrors of war.
Three of the regiments, the Third, Seventh and Eighth Infantry, were not mounted until March, 1864. They had eagerly sought to serve as cavalry and when the longings of years were gratified and they be- came horsemen rather than footmen, they believed they had reached a military Utopia and were henceforth to enter a soldier's earthly para- dise. In grateful recognition of the kindness bestowed upon them in this long-sought chance, they felt a new enthusiasm in danger and a quickened zeal in behalf of the Southern cause, for which they had made such protracted and such willing sacrifice.
To these three regiments of newly-mounted men was added the Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry, a command that had been drilled, trained and seasoned for military service for nearly two years, and who in many sharp conflicts had demonstrated that in all that made great cav- alry, they had few equals and no superiors.
This brigade was placed under General A. Buford, a man of great courage and soldiery genius. He had behind him an array of magnifi- cent lieutenants-Lyon, Crossland, Hale, Tyler, Tompson, Shacklette, Faulkner and other Kentuckians, and who did a full share in giving to General Forrest the splendid fame and renown he both won and deserved as a very, very great cavalry leader.
Waiving the numerous engagements in which the Forrest Ken- tucky brigade took part, two battles must ever stand out as the places in which it demonstrated its courage and steadiness under fire and its calmness and power in close range fighting. At Brice's Cross-Roads the Kentucky brigade, under Lyon, acquitted itself so superbly that impartial history must assign them in the defeat of the Federal cavalry in the first half of the battle, the chiefest and highest renown.
Outnumbered and under the rays of a burning sun that was almost suffocating through a dense black-jack thicket, they faced their enemies, and, relying largely upon their ever-trusted revolvers, drove them in confusion from the field. Conditions considered, no men ever acquitted themselves more brilliantly or successfully, and no cavalry conflict in a war marked by the highest cavalry achievements of the world, was carried on more gallantly or crowned with more glorious victory than came to these Kentucky men at Brice's Cross-Roads.
When the days of the Confederacy began to be darkened by great adversity, the genius of Forrest shone with intensest brilliance, and in these varying experiences, overcoming all difficulties, he added new lustre to his own and the Confederate name.
Great as were the achievements at Brice's Cross-Roads, thirty-five days later at Harrisburg, Miss., a crowning sorrow was to mark the career of the Forrest Kentucky brigade. It is needless now to argue why it came and who was responsible for it. Divided authority, dif- fering judgments, a lack of confidence and zeal, was marked by a disastrous defeat, and the greatest decimation attached to the Ken- tucky brigade. They faced disaster with courage, they undertook a hopeless task with intrepidity, and though shattered and torn, they met the demand of an evil hour with a valor that added new radiance to their fame.
Little is known by Confederates at large of the heroism of these Kentuckians who served under General Forrest. To give them their proper place in history has been the highest ambition of Colonel Henry George. Forty-six years is a long period to await vindication, but through these years Colonel George has nursed this purpose to tell the world of what his associates did in the great war.
Almost a child in 1861, he enlisted in the Seventh Kentucky In- fantry. He saw all that splendid regiment did, and in its battles and marches he followed its fortunes to the end, when, in May, 1865, it furled its guerdons and laid down its arms, so gloriously borne, and accepted the results fate decreed should come to the Confederate cause.
Painstaking, candid, just, and, above all, scrupulously careful- of truth, no man could bring to the task of putting these Kentuckians in proper historical setting, than the author of this book. Modest, he says but little of himself, and yet in the story of the dangers, priva- tions and triumphs of his beloved companions in arms, he finds ample compensation for the labor, love and energy that comes to book- making. All those who love the Confederate cause, who cherish its heroic memories, will thank the author for what he has written in these pages, and the volume will be greatly valued by those who shall here- after aid in writing a true history of the deeds of those who wore the gray and followed the Stars and Bars, some to death, but all who survived to the sad end of the Southland's illustrious effort for National life.
BENNETT H. YOUNG.
Louisville, April 26, 1911.
INTRODUCTORY.
The author's reason for writing this book is, that no writer of the internal war has written specially of the Kentucky Brigades, composed of the Third, Seventh and Eighth Kentucky Regiments, and later the Twelfth Kentucky, commanded at different times by Preston, Rust, Buford, Thompson, Lyon, Crossland and others.
There are people in Kentucky who served in the Confederate armies who do not know there was such a command, although they did as hard service and were engaged in some of the hardest fought bat- tles of the war, including Shiloh, Baton Rouge, Corinth, Baker's Creek, Brice's Cross Roads, Harrisburg, Franklin, Nashville and all of For- rest's engagements the last year and a half of the war.
They lost in one engagement-Harrisburg-forty-five per cent of their number.
The book is dedicated specially to the survivors of that heroic command, their descendants and friends.
The matter was prepared while the author was busy discharging the intricate duties as Commandant of the Kentucky Confederate Home, and was often called away from his writing to attend to official duties while writing a single page. Regardless of the fact that the work was gotten up under such disadvantages, he hopes it will be read with interest by those for whom it was written.
CHAPTER I.
Constitutional Rights to Secede, including the Origin of the Negro Traffic.
When the author first conceived the idea of writing a short his- tory of the Kentucky Brigade, composed of the Third, Seventh, Eighth and Twelfth Kentucky, he simply contemplated writing a plain ac- count of the movements they made, and the principal battles they fought. But for fear the book would fall into the hands of some who have not investigated the constitutional rights of the States to secede and the immediate cause of the war between the States, I have thought best to give some facts along that line. I take it that no one will attempt to controvert the fact that for more than half of the first cen- tury of our existence a large majority of the American people be- lieved that any State in the Union had a right to withdraw from the compact; it was the unbroken teachings of nearly all our statesmen prior to 1861. Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston says in his admirably prepared book, "Confederate Military History:" "In America the powers of sovereignty are divided between the government of the Union and those of the States. They are each sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other. If it be true that the Constitu- tion and laws of the land made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land, it is equally true that the laws of the United States made not in pursuance thereof, cannot be the supreme law of the land. As long as these principles were observed in the administration of the government there was peace. It was not the South alone which maintained them as embodying the correct theory of the Constitution. Other States, both before and after the compact, had contended for them as the conditions under which the Union was formed or was possible. New York, among others, in ratifying the Constitution, de- clared that the powers delegated by her could be resumed whenever perverted to her injury or oppression, and that every power not so granted remained with her. Not only was this so, but Massachusetts was the very first to assert her sovereign rights, to the very verge of active hostility to the Federal government and affiliation with Great Britian in the War of 1812. The Federal laws were nullified by Gov- ernors and Legislature, and in 1814, at the darkest period of the war, the Legislature declared that 'it was as much the duty of the State authorities to watch over the rights reserved as of the United States to exercise the powers which are delegated, and that States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and make their own decisions.' A mere reference to the Hartford Convention is sufficient to indicate the extent to which these sentiments prevailed in New England.
"As time progressed and the profit of the slave trade fell off, and when the Northern slave States had sold their human chattels to the Southern planters, a twofold system of oppression began, the success- ful execution of which required a relinquishment of such constitu-
CHAPTER I.
Constitutional Rights to Secede, including the Origin of the Negro Traffic.
When the author first conceived the idea of writing a short his- tory of the Kentucky Brigade, composed of the Third, Seventh, Eighth and Twelfth Kentucky, he simply contemplated writing a plain ac- count of the movements they made, and the principal battles they fought. But for fear the book would fall into the hands of some who have not investigated the constitutional rights of the States to secede and the immediate cause of the war between the States, I have thought best to give some facts along that line. I take it that no one will attempt to controvert the fact that for more than half of the first cen- tury of our existence a large majority of the American people be- lieved that any State in the Union had a right to withdraw from the compact; it was the unbroken teachings of nearly all our statesmen prior to 1861. Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston says in his admirably prepared book, "Confederate Military History:" "In America the powers of sovereignty are divided between the government of the Union and those of the States. They are each sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other. If it be true that the Constitu- tion and laws of the land made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land, it is equally true that the laws of the United States made not in pursuance thereof, cannot be the supreme law of the land. As long as these principles were observed in the administration of the government there was peace. It was not the South alone which maintained them as embodying the correct theory of the Constitution. Other States, both before and after the compact, had contended for them as the conditions under which the Union was formed or was possible. New York, among others, in ratifying the Constitution, de- clared that the powers delegated by her could be resumed whenever perverted to her injury or oppression, and that every power not so granted remained with her. Not only was this so, but Massachusetts was the very first to assert her sovereign rights, to the very verge of active hostility to the Federal government and affiliation with Great Britian in the War of 1812. The Federal laws were nullified by Gov- ernors and Legislature, and in 1814, at the darkest period of the war, the Legislature declared that 'it was as much the duty of the State authorities to watch over the rights reserved as of the United States to exercise the powers which are delegated, and that States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and make their own decisions.' A mere reference to the Hartford Convention is sufficient to indicate the extent to which these sentiments prevailed in New England.
"As time progressed and the profit of the slave trade fell off, and when the Northern slave States had sold their human chattels to the Southern planters, a twofold system of oppression began, the success- ful execution of which required a relinquishment of such constitu-
12
HISTORY OF THE 3D, 7TH, 8TH AND 12TH KENTUCKY.
tional views and a revival of Federalism, which Mr. Jefferson had overthrown. The protective tariff system was devised as a special process by which one section of the country would build itself up at the expense of the other and grow wealthy under an unequal form of taxation but little short of legalized robbery. The South protested, pleaded against this discrimination, but except in one instance, in the case of South Carolina in 1832, there was never any action other than in the form of legislative or party protest, and no overt act of war. The other form of hostility and unconstitutional action on the part of the Northern States against the South was in the nullification of the express provisions of the Constitution of the United States which recognized slavery in three articles and required slaves to be delivered up to their owners when they should escape into another State. This assertion of the 'higher law' first took the form of fanatical agitation, and was condemned by such men as Edward Everett, who, in addition to the obligation which the Constitution enjoyed, held that 'the great relation of servitude in some form or other, with greater or less de- parture from the theoretic equalities of men, is inseparable from our nation. Domestic slavery is not, in my judgment, to be set down as immoral and irreligious relation. It is a condition of life as well as any other, to be justified by morality, religion and international law.' The present generation, after having been drilled into the belief that the late war was a righteous measure to extricate the horrid crime of slavery, will, as generations yet to come, find it difficult to understand how such a transition of public sentiment could occur in so short a time from the embodiment of the most cultured and humane thought on the subject, as cited above, to the fanaticism which in a few short years has made a saint of John Brown and declared the author of the emancipation proclamation an inspired man. The crusade, once be- gun, grew rapidly from one of mere fanatical zeal and the agitation by voluntary associations and religious organizations, to the deliberate action of the State Legislatures, fifteen of which nullified the constitu- tional provision and the laws passed to enforce the same, by impos- ing severe penalties upon those who sought to execute the fugitive slave law. In short, it grew from a small germ of sentiment without regard to law to a cruel attempt to incite servile war in Virginia, and finally to a great revolution which brushed aside law, constitutions and American brotherhood, until a million men were in arms invading the homes and shedding the blood of a people who thought, as all early publicists and the most enlightened later ones maintained, that they were protected against such infraction of right by the very terms of the compact under which they lived. The action of the Southern States, looking to the protection of their constitutional rights from such a tidal wave of fanaticism by the peaceful expedient of with- drawing from the Union and resuming the sovereignty they had sur- rendered to the Federal government upon well-defined conditions, will not appear illogical or revolutionary when it is reflected that the tenor of public opinion, as well as judicial decisions, was not adverse to be- lieve in such a remedy. They proposed no war upon the government at Washington, nor upon any individual States, and no one had, until
13
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SECEDE.
after their initial action, claimed that the right of coercion existed as a means of keeping them in the Union. The whole trend of sentiment in the North, as well as in the South, while many deprecated the wis- dom or necessity of the movement, was that it was a question for them to decide as an exercise of a reserved right."
In 1859, at a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in which Joshua R. Giddings, Senator B. F. Wade, Governor S. P. Chase and ex-Governor Dennison participated, resolutions were adopted using the language and reaffirming the strongest declaration of the Kentucky resolutions of 1798. In 1861 Wendell Phillips said in a speech at New Bedford, Mass .: "Here are a series of States girdling the Gulf who think their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without ap- pealing to you or to me."
Three days after Mr. Lincoln's election, Horace Greely, in the New York Tribune, said: "If the cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may still be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless. We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter, and whenever a considerable section of the Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets."
Quotations of a similar character from sources equally as prom- inent could be multiplied indefinitely, showing that as far as Northern sentiment was concerned, the Southern States which passed ordinances of secession before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln had no reason to believe that their action would meet with the result which so soon changed the feeling of acquiescence in their movement, expressed by Mr. Phillips and Mr. Greely, into a determination to compel them to remain in the Union by force of arms-an illusive dream from which they awoke too late to avert the consequences of their acts.
"Justice to brave men, who gave or risked their lives in defense of the South, demands that the truth as they saw and see it shall be stated. No enemy respects a cringing foe, and a manly submission to the results of the war, in the most reserved sense, does not imply the surrender of mental conviction as to the causes of the war or the belief in the truth of the principles for which one fought. The condi- tions are indeed changed, and the results of the war embodied in the amendments have altered the Constitution so as to make the views tenable before the war incompatible with that instrument as amended. As an example of those changes, it may be noted that every one now is, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen of the United States, whereas previous to its adoption he was a citizen only by virtue of being a citizen of the State in which he lived. The latter was the chief ground upon which paramount allegiance was held to be due to the State, whereas one of the revolutionary results of the war is that Federal citizenship is placed on the higher plane. But with this ex-
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