USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 48
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The Federal forces were disposed to press the advantage thus gained. General Grant, in command of a large force of infantry and cavalry and ten batteries of artillery, pressed forward to Fort Donelson, on the Cumber- land river, which was near the Kentucky and Tennessee line. The garrison at Fort Don- elson was composed of fifteen thousand men, under command of Generals Pillow, Floyd and Buckner, the former in chief command.
The Kentucky troops present were the Sec- ond Kentucky infantry, under command of Col. Roger W. Hanson, the Eighth Kentucky infantry, under command of Col. H. B. Lyon, and Graves' battery, all under command of General Buckner.
During the attack upon Fort Donelson the
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weather was the worst possible for those who defended it. Rain and sleet deluged the trenches and the troops had but little shelter against their fury and the intense cold. The Confederate forces, in trenches rapidly filling with water, endeavored to sustain their cour- age by the reflection that the men on the other side were suffering like privations.
In a general assault by General Grant, strengthened by his heavy artillery and the fire of the gunboats, the Federals were driven back. The gunboats were crippled and driven off by the steady fire of the Confederate ar- tillery and the Federal army was forced back by the infantry of the Confederate lines. On the fifteenth, there was a sortie made with a view to the escape of the beleaguered forces, but this was unsuccessful, though many were lost on both sides. General Pillow and Gen- eral Floyd, imagining themselves of far more importance than they then were, or ever after, fled from the scene and left to General Buck- ner the command of the Confederate forces. The latter could have escaped with them had he chosen to do so, but he was a soldier by birth, education and training, and he elected to stand by the men whom he commanded. The status of these three men of high rank at Fort Donelson may be understood by the fact that Pillow and Floyd were never afterwards heard of, while Buckner came to be a lieutenant general of the Confederate army. General Buckner, finding his position untenable, sur- rendered the forces under his command to General Grant. He has been criticised for this action by men who know nothing of mil- itary movements. The truth is that Floyd and Pillow should have remained with the forces under their command, and, when the bitter moment of surrender came, they should have been there to meet it. To the contrary, they ran away and left a gallant Kentuckian, not only to accept defeat but to go to a prison cell in their stead. Buckner, at the head of the worn soldiers whom he surrendered, was
a thousand times the superior of the officers who fled when the supreme moment of sur- render came.
The Kentuckians who had met their compa- triots on the southern side of the battle line at Fort Donelson, were the Seventeenth Ken- tucky, commanded by Col. John H. McHenry, and the Twenty-fifth Kentucky, under Col. J. M. Shackelford. These two regiments, as their relatives and friends in the Kentucky regiments on the Confederate side of the line, had borne themselves with conspicuous gal- lantry and were entitled to a fair share of the praise given to those who had, with their as- sistance, won the important contest.
General Buckner, the commander of the defeated Confederate forces, had been in Mexico and later in New York, the intimate friend of General Grant to whom he had now surrendered the troops under his command. When he came on board of the boat where General Grant had his headquarters, the lat- ter called him aside and with due modesty, placed his purse at the command of his for- mer comrade, now his defeated adversary. General Buckner, while appreciating the feel- ing of comradeship which prompted the of- fer, declined to accept the favor. Years after- wards, when General Grant found himself the victim of a scoundrel in New York, who took advantage of his trustfulness in human nature and brought him to penury, General Buckner voluntarily went to the assistance of his comrade in the Mexican war, and by his contribution of ready funds placed the vet- eran of two wars and the former president of the United States, beyond the demands of immediate want for him and his family. Those who can find naught but evil to say and think of those who served in the Confederate army might well be silent in the presence of this free contribution of $5,000 from a Confeder- ate soldier to the former head of the army of the United States and chief magistrate of the country, in the hour of the latter's deepest
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distress. When the great soldier had breathed his last, it is gratifying to know that chiefest among those who bore him to his grave was General Simon Bolivar Buckner of Kentucky.
After the surrender of Fort Donelson, Gen- eral Buckner and Gen. H. B. Lyon, another Kentuckian, were sent north as prisoners of war, the former to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor where he was denied the usual court- esies of an opportunity to write to or receive letters from his family and friends. After eight months, he was exchanged and was pro- moted to major general and subsequently to lieutenant general in the army of the Confed- eracy.
The surrender of Fort Donelson to a far superior force left Nashville open to an un- opposed attack. The possession of Bowling Green by General Johnston was no longer ten- able, and that place was evacuated, the troops moving upon Nashville in the midst of a storm of rain and ice, never to be forgotten by those who were participants in the retreat. Nash- ville could no longer be held and the army continued its retreat to Murfreesboro, there to be joined by the troops of Gen. George B. Crittenden's command who had suffered de- feat at Fishing Creek, Kentucky. Here the army was reorganized, being divided into three divisions commanded respectively by Generals Hardee. Crittenden and Pillow, the latter of whom had evaded capture at Fort Donelson by turning over his command to a subordinate and running away from an enemy whom he vainly imagined had an especial desire to ef- fect his capture, though for what reason has never yet been made known. Gen. John C. Breckinridge was placed in command of a brigade composed of the Third, Fourth. Sixth and Ninth Kentucky infantry, the First Ken- tucky cavalry. Morgan's squadrons of Ken- tucky cavalry, and the field batteries of artil- lery commanded by Captains Byrne and Cobb. The army afterwards continued its march to Burnsville, Mississippi, where it was strength-
ened by a junction with the forces under Gen- eral Beauregard.
At this time, Adjutant General Finnell, of Kentucky, reported twenty-eight regiments of infantry from Kentucky in the Union army numbering 24,026 men ; six regiments of cav- alry numbering 4.979 men, and two batteries of artillery of 198 men, a total of 29,203 men ready for service. This report had no resemi- blance to neutrality and indicated that Ken- tucky had made up its mind to take a part in the great disturbance then interesting the country.
Mr. Lincoln, on March 6. 1862, recom- mended to congress, the enactment of the fol- lowing resolution :
"Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used in its dis- cretion, to compensate for losses or incon- veniences from such change of system."
This resolution was passed by a vote of three to one in both house and senate, but in the latter body, the two Kentucky senators. Garrett Davis and Lazarus W. Powell, voted against its adoption, as did most of those rep- resenting the border states, though its adop- tion and the putting into operation the plan therein suggested. would have resulted in emancipation with compensation for the slaves thus set free in the states along the border as then defined. Those representing those states were ardent friends of the Union, but were not in sympathy with the views of those who sought the abolition of slavery and considered it the cardinal principle for which the war was being fought.
While congress was considering questions that might or might not bring the belligerent parties to a reasonable consideration of the questions involved. those in the field were not idle. However congress might hesitate. the soldiers in the field construed it to be their duty to be at work. Those of them who were
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confronting each other at Shiloh church, on the Tennessee river, held views which meant action, strenuous action. On April 6, 1862. General Grant with an army of 40,000 men, supported by gunboats, confronted Gen. Al- bert Sidney Johnston and the Confederate forces. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, with the heavy force under his command, was twenty- five miles in Gen. Grant's rear, with a river separating them. General Johnston's plan to strike and crush Grant before Buell could ar- rive, was disarranged and the attack was de- layed until Sunday morning, April 6th, when the battle began and was hotly contested dur- ing all the day. The result of the first day's battle was favorable to the Confederates, the Federal army being driven to the river bank where it huddled in confusion under the pro- tection of the gunboats. But the partial vic- tory of the day was purchased at a great cost. General Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding the Confederate army, was killed while cheer- ing on his men. The provisional governor of Kentucky, George W. Johnson, as stated else- where, fell while fighting bravely as a pri- vate soldier in the ranks. Major Thomas B. Monroe, a gallant Kentucky soldier, also fell.
The Confederate commands from Ken- tucky engaged in the first day's fighting were the Third. Fourth, Sixth and Ninth regiments of infantry commanded by Col. Robert P. Trabue; Captains Cobbs' and Byrne's batter- ies, and the cavalry squadron commanded by Captain (afterwards Major General) John H. Morgan. Gen. John C. Breckinridge com- manded the division to which the above named troops were assigned.
On the Federal side in this battle, princi- pally engaged in the second day's engagement. were the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twentieth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Kentucky infantry and the First, Second and Third Kentucky cavalry. The brigade formation of these troops can-
not be given, as the various regiments did not serve together as one body, but were members of brigades formed by troops from several states.
General Buell arrived at the scene of battle on the night of the 6th, and the contest was renewed the next morning with the result that the Federals regained the positions fromn which they had been driven on the previous day. Johnston was dead and Beauregard was in command. Perhaps that simple statement is sufficient explanation of the final result.
Smith's "History of Kentucky" pays this fine meed of praise to the brave Kentuckians who met each other in Shiloh's field: "On either side, the Kentucky troops fought with a valor worthy of their fame. The loss of the Confederate army in the conflict of the two days, was 10,699 in killed, wounded and prisoners ; of the Federal army, 13.573. The loss of the Kentucky Confederates was 680; of the Kentucky Federals over 800."
The final result of the great struggle at Shiloh is known to the world. After the sec- ond day's battle had ended, the Confederate army withdrew to Corinth, Mississippi, to which point they were. after a time, followed by the Federal army.
Perhaps it is as well to be stated here as elsewhere, that the number of Kentuckians who served in the Confederate army will never he known. Soon after the farce of neutrality had been fully developed and Ken- tucky occupied by Federal troops and her ru- ral districts filled with Home Guards, who had been armed by the Federal government. it became difficult for those desiring to enlist in the Confederate army to reach its lines. Recruits left their homes singly, in groups, or in half-formed companies, making their way as best they could, into the Confederate lines, reaching which, they were given to enlisting in the first organized command with which they came in contact. There were few, if any regiments in the Confederate army in which
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Kentuckians were not to be found. They left their homes to fight and were not particular as to the command in which they should do their fighting. The result is confusing to one who would write of their deeds, but that, to their survivors, is probably of little moment. They have the satisfaction of feeling that they did their duty, no matter the command in which they served. Their number has been variously estimated at from 40,000 to 75,000, the former being possibly too low and the latter too high an estimate. Probably 50,000 would be more nearly correct.
Mention is made in the report of the battle of Shiloh, of the cavalry squadron com- manded by Capt. John H. Morgan, of Lexing- ton, Kentucky. This was the nucleus of a command that was to become famous in the history of the state and of the war. Captain Morgan had served as a first lieutenant in the First Kentucky cavalry, commanded by Col- onel Humphrey Marshall in the war with Mexico, seeing hard service and participat- ing in the battle of Buena Vista as the chief contest in which he was engaged. Returning to Lexington at the close of this war. he en- gaged in business pursuits until 1861, when he led the company of Kentucky State Guards, of which he was the captian, to the Confederate army. There he at once began the career which led to high rank and marked him fairly as the originator of a new method of war- fare. No one ever knew where to next look for Morgan ; he was in the rear of the ene- my's lines today, capturing and burning a wagon-train; tomorrow he was miles away surprising a guard at an important railroad bridge, capturing the guard and burning the bridge. He flashed like a meteor, from point to point, making himself extremely disagree- able to the enemy and fascinating beyond measure the young Kentuckians whose sym- pathies were with the south, causing them to flock to his standard. Soon his so-called squadron was a regiment, of which he had
command. Presently, this regiment was a brigade, and Captain Morgan became Briga- dier General Morgan and widened his field of operations. To him the rear of the enemy was anywhere behind the Federal army and he was soon found leading his command into Kentucky, to the unbounded delight of his gallant troopers and the confusion of the Fed- erals. When Morgan came to be colonel of the Second Kentucky cavalry, the lieutenant colonel was Basil W. Duke, who had mar- ried his sister, and this gallant young officer was later to attain the rank of brigadier gen- eral and shed additional luster upon Ken- tucky's soldiery. He was a man after Mor- gan's own heart; brave, dashing and filled with that enthusiastic appreciation of a square fight which animated his immediate superior. None ever thinks today of Morgan's cavalry that Basil Duke is not also in his thoughts. Though the fate of the soldier came to Gen- eral Morgan, not long before the close of hos- tilities, General Duke survived, and today lives the life of a modest, honored citizen of Kentucky, and the ideal of the men who fol- lowed him in the trying scenes of warfare.
General Morgan rarely operated with the army, but semi-independently, and was fre- quently as difficult to find as the traditional needle in a haystack. He was rarely still long enough to be easily found; his business was finding other people-preferably the enemy- and rendering them uncomfortable, and that he attended strictly to that business the records of the war attest. Sometimes he won; at others, he did not. On these latter occasions, he had to shift for himself and do it quickly. General Duke, in his "History of Morgan's Command," says: "It must be remembered that Morgan very rarely fought with the army ; he had to make his command a self-sustaining one. If repulsed, he could not fall back and reform behind the infantry. He had to fight infantry, cavalry, artillery, take towns when every house was a garrison ;
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Ino It Morgan.
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and attack fortifications with nothing to de- pend upon but his own immediate command. He was obliged, therefore, to adopt a method which enabled him to do a great deal in a short time, and to keep his men always in hand, whether successful or repulsed. With his support from forty to five hundred miles distant, an officer had better learn to rely upon himself."
It is not within the purpose of this work to follow the movements of the army except in cases where Kentucky troops, Federal or Confederate, are directly concerned. But at this point, it may be acceptable to quote again from General Duke's characterization of the Kentucky volunteer, as he found him in the Confederate army. This description, to a par- tial extent. applies also to the volunteers from Kentucky in the Federal army, with modifications produced by the sterner disci- pline in the latter army.
Referring to the morale of his regiment. and his remarks are generally applicable to the others, General Duke says : "The char- acter of Kentucky troops was never better illustrated than in this regiment and at that time. Give them officers that they love, respect, and rely upon, and anything can be accomplished with them. While al- most irrepressibly fond of whiskey and incorrigible - when not on active service -about straggling through the country and running out of camp. they, nevertheless, stick to work at the time when it is necessary, and answer to the roll-call in an emergency 1111- failingly, no matter what may be the pros- pect before them. Aware, too, that, in quiet times, they are always misbehaving. they will cheerfully submit to the severest punishment. provided always that it is not of a degrading nature. They cannot endure harsh and in- sulting language, or anything that is humiliat- ing. In this respect. they show the traits of their southern brethren-the Irish are of a similar disposition."
The peculiar nature of General Morgan's military movements, opposed as they were to "book soldiering," caused the people of the north to refer to him as a "guerrilla," as they did to Mosby in Virginia. As a matter of fact, this characterization was unjust in each instance, to those very able officers. Each of them was a duly commissioned officer of the Confederate army, and each of them illus- trated in the highest degree a new value for cavalry troops.
No higher testimonial to the value of Mor- gan's methods could be given than their adop- tion by the cavalry commanders of the Fed- eral army. On Christmas Day, 1862, General Carter, of the Federal army, commanding eleven hundred cavalry, started on a raid through southwest Virginia, in the course of which he destroyed a bridge at Blountsville on the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad, capturing three hundred prisoners. He next burned a railroad bridge at Wautaga on the same road, besides inflicting damage to the railroad track wherever practicable, which it required weeks to repair. There was, at this time, en route to Richmond, Virginia, a body of Federal prisoners-captured at Hartsville, Tennessee, by Kentucky troops-over the line of railroad destroyed by General Carter. These prisoners and their guards were halted at Knoxville, on account of this raid, and re- turned to Chattanooga, from which point they were afterwards taken to the military prison at Atlanta.
If General Morgan was a guerrilla chief- tain, what was General Carter who adopted his methods? What was Sheridan who used Morgan's tactics in his efforts to enter and capture Richmond? What was Streight who attempted a like raid through the south ? What was Stoneman who came to grief in a like ef- fort? The truth is, that Morgan was the orig- inator of a new use for cavalry ; Forrest and Wheeler, of the Confederate army, followed his methods, and the Federal cavalry leaders
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never began to operate effectively until they had adopted the new system developed by the great Kentucky cavalryman. If Morgan was a guerrilla chieftain, every Federal cavalry commander who ever amounted to anything, was also a guerrilla. It is too late now to use epithets ; the honors won on desperate fields of high endeavor, belong alike to Federal and Confederate, and, first of all, to the great country which supplied those commanders. The day is not yet, unfortunately, but it will surely come when equal and exact justice will be given to the men who strove mightily in that great struggle, and no man will care to ask the uniform worn by the winning contest- ants. They were Americans and the honors won by each will be justly divided with the other.
It had been strenuously declared by those who adhered to the cause of the Union, that the war was not waged for the destruction of slavery, while it was claimed, with equal force, by those on the other side that it had no other object. Thousands of men in the border states where slavery existed, had enlisted in the Fed- eral army because they loved the Union and did not want to see it dissolved. They indig- nantly denied that they sought the destruc- tion of slavery, or that they had entered the army with any other object in view than the preservation of the Union. Col. R. T. Jacob and Col. Frank Wolford, each gallant com- mander of a gallant Federal regiment of cav- alry, were so outspoken in their expressions on this subject as to bring about their arrest and banishment by the Federal authorities, as has been hitherto stated. There was not a thinking man in Kentucky who allowed his judgment to prevail over his prejudices, who did. not know that the final success of the Federal arms meant the destruction of slav- ery ; yet many of these denied that such a re- sult was possible, while others, with a wise precaution which did them credit, said noth- ing at all. The man who did not know. early
in 1861, when hostilities began, that slavery was doomed if the southern cause failed, was a man whose judgment was of so negligible a quality that his opinions are not worth quot- ing. The south knew what the final result would be if it lost, and would have been will- ing to submit to the loss of its slaves, if it could have the privilege of controlling its own internal affairs free from the influence of su- perior forces of government elsewhere.
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln is- sued his Emancipation Proclamation. "As a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion, I order and declare that all per- sons held as slaves within the designated states now in rebellion are and henceforth, shall be free, and the military and naval authorities will recognize and maintain their freedom." This proclamation might as properly have borne the date of the firing on Fort Sumter, with the supplemental date of the surrender at Appomattox. It was the death-blow of slavery everywhere, though it pretended to refer alone to the states then in the Confed- eracy.
Professor Shaler, who has been frequently quoted herein because of the clarity of his views and his lack of sectional bias, says of the Emancipation Proclamation: "This proc- lamation was felt as a blow by a large part of the Union people of Kentucky. Their view was that the rebels were breaking the consti- tution, while the Federal armies, to which they were giving their support, were endeav- oring to maintain that contract. This proc- lamation was an act that put them, as well as their enemies, in an extra constitutional atti- tude. They felt that if both sides were to fight outside the constitution, their position lost the moral and historic value it had at the outset.
"These difficulties, brought about by the proclamation, were naturally increased by the constant interference of the military with unoffending citizens who were suspected of
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rebel sympathies. The Union party, and the legislature clinging tenaciously to the civil law, deprecated this action, and by frequent remonstrances with the Federal authorities, from time to time, abated this evil. These interferences with the civil law took two fla- grantly unjust forms-the taxing of the so- called rebel sympathizers for the damages done by guerrillas, or by the raiding parties of the enemy. It is impossible to devise any system under the pretense of law that brings about more irritating injustice than does this often-tried but ever-failing measure. The outrages which the so-called rebel sympathiz- ers were forced to make good, were utterly beyond their control. No American people have ever been subjected to as iniquitous op- pression as this system brought about. The other form of the evil arose from the inter- ference of the military authorities at the elec- tions. This was even more unnecessary and more irritating to the lawful Union men than the confiscation of property. For centuries, they and their fathers had guarded the freedom of elections as a sacred heritage. There was no time since the overthrow of neutrality that the Union men did not have a majority of two-thirds of the voters; therefore there was no need of interference.
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