USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 26
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Before the morning of the 9th, General Buell was re-enforced by the timely arrival of other detachments of his army, while General Bragg could only re-enforce with Withers' division. The latter chose, therefore, to fall back to Harrodsburg, and concentrate by ordering to that place the army of General Smith. Here the two armies, now in full strength, confronted each other, forty-five thousand Confederates, and fifty-four thousand Fed- erals, after the losses at Perryville. Their lines were but three miles apart, and it was the general belief that General Bragg should, and would, deliver battle to his enemy now, on terms as nearly equal as is usual in the great contests of war. But two days before he had exposed three divisions of his troops to the possibility of being overwhelmed by Buell's whole army. Would he now fight that army with the threefold strength of concentration ?
The expectation of a great battle on that day was disappointed. General Bragg ordered his command to fall back upon his base, at Bryantsville, and, gathering up all supplies collected, he continued his march of retreat to Lan- caster, where the army was divided, General Smith going out by Richmond and Cumberland Gap, and General Bragg by Crab Orchard, into Tennessee.
In the language of Duke's History of Morgan's Cavalry : "Thus ended a campaign from which so much was expected, and which, had it been suc- cessful, would have incalculably benefited the Confederate cause. Able writers have exerted all their skill in apologies for this campaign, but time has developed into a certainty the opinion then instinctively held by so many, that, with the failure to hold Kentucky, the best and last chance to win the war was thrown away. All the subsequent tremendous struggle was but the expiring efforts of a gallant people in what they believed to be a great cause." At the Confederate capital, the Richmond papers spoke of Bragg's Kentucky campaign as "a brilliant blunder, and a magnificent failure, profoundly disappointing and mortifying Southern people, and dash- ing their fond hopes of liberating Kentucky and Tennessee from the Federal hold."
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HEAVY FIGHTING.
Heavy skirmishing and cavalry rencounters were of frequent occurrence in the commotions caused by the movements of the two great armies. On the roth, Colonel John Boyle, with the Ninth Kentucky cavalry, dashed into Harrodsburg and captured some sixteen hundred Confederates in the rear of Bragg's army, many of them the wounded from Perryville. General John H. Morgan, returning upon the route of the Confederate retreat, attacked the Fourth Ohio cavalry, who had occupied Lexington, killing and wound- ing a number, and capturing three hundred and fifty. The First and Twentieth Kentucky infantry fell upon Kirby Smith's rear guard in Clay county, killed and captured one hundred men, and cut off one hundred and fifty head of cattle. Morgan's cavalry, turning westward and passing in the rear of Buell's army, destroyed long sections of the Louisville & Nashville railroad, and burnt the bridges and trestlework south of Bowling Green.
638
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
(1863-65.)
Extremes of martial law.
The decision of Judge L. Watson Andrews.
Woodward defeated in Christian county.
Troubles about slaves.
Buell must occupy Nashville.
Removed, and General Rosecrans put in command.
Morgan raids Kentucky again.
Federal cavalry retaliate.
Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, January 1, 1863.
Kentucky Unionists protest.
Indemnity taxes on Southern sympathiz- ers.
Democratic convention broken up at Frankfort by Gilbert's bayonets.
Bayonets intrude upon ballots.
Enduring loyalty.
Dissensions in the Union ranks.
Bragg's army concentrated at Murfrees- boro.
Operations of Morgan's cavalry.
Federal army moves out to attack
Great battle of Stone river. The disastrous charge of General Breck- inridge.
Kentucky troops engaged.
General Hanson killed.
His life. General William Preston.
Bramlette governor.
Colonel Cluke captures Mount Sterling.
Pegram and Wolford.
Former defeated. Cluke defeated. Other cavalry fights.
Morgan's great raid through Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.
Defeat by Colonel Moore. Cross the Ohio at Brandenburg. Raid to Cincinnati.
On to Buffington island.
Disasters and surrender.
Imprisoned in the Ohio penitentiary.
Captain Hines conceives and executes an escape.
Morgan's course.
His new command.
His last raid into Kentucky. Successes and disasters.
Returns to East Tennessee.
Betrayed and killed at Greenville, Ten-
nessee, through a revengeful woman. Seat of war transferred south.
Burnside commands in Kentucky. General Boyle resigns.
Kentucky troops enlisted.
Colored enlistments.
Colonels Wolford and Jacob arrested for protesting.
Legislative protest.
Drafts and substitutes
Brokerage in men. Lawless anarchy.
"Guerrilla " bands appear.
Outrages.
Provocations.
Confederate soldiers' condition.
Corruptions and abuses in high official quarters in Kentucky.
The outrages, murders, and extortions of these equal those of the brigand gangs on either side.
Legislature votes five million dollars for defense.
General Burbridge carries out General Sherman's cruel orders.
Confederates taken out of prison and shot, by General Burbridge's orders.
Reign of terror brought upon all peace- ful citizens.
Provost - marshal government and elec- tions.
.
.
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KENTUCKY UNDER MARTIAL LAW.
Judge Robertson elected to the Appel- late bench.
Women and children arrested.
Resistance to the enlistment of slaves.
Governor Bramlette resists the lawless orders of General Ewing.
President revokes latter.
A commission finds General E. A. Paine and associates at Paducah and Mayfield guilty of flagrant crimes.
"Burbridge's " hog order."
Forrest repulsed at Paducah.
General Burbridge leads four thousand men to attack Saltville.
Defeated by General John S. Williams. Great battles South and East. Petty strife in Kentucky.
One million men to two hundred thou- sand.
Lee surrenders.
Other surrenders follow.
Lincoln re-elected.
Coin and currency.
Senator Guthrie.
Kentuckians enlisted.
Committee visit the president and ask the removal of Burbridge.
Thirteenth amendment.
Physical stature of Kentuckians.
Statistical tables.
Endurance and courage on both sides.
First Kentucky brigade statistics.
Losses of life by the war.
Combats in the State of Kentucky.
Kentucky was now again restored to the undisputed sway of martial law. The late experiences of the Confederate invasion gave new pretexts for the exercise of the severest measures of repression, and of punishment for actual or alleged disloyalty. Even General Buell, hitherto so conservative . and profoundly regardful of civil law, issued a severe order about this date, and charged General Boyle with its execution, that all persons who had actively abetted the invasion of Kentucky must be arrested, sent to Vicks- burg, and forbidden to return. In some communities large assessments were made on citizens of Southern sympathy, under plea of reimbursing Union men for the depredations of guerrillas. In Caseyville district, Union county, thirty-five thousand dollars were thus taken under military license under this plea, and pretended to have been disbursed to injured Union men. Two hundred Southern sympathizers under arrest were, on November 6th, sent north of the Ohio river by Provost-Marshal Dent, on condition that they would remain out of the State.
About this time Judge L. Watson Andrews, of the Mason circuit court, at Maysville, decided the Federal confiscation act unconstitutional, showing an inflexible courage in the support of the civil jurisdictions, and asserting the supremacy of civil law in the midst of the rage of war.
On November 9th, General Ransom's Federal brigade, in a spirited contest near Garrettsburg, Christian county, defeated Colonel Woodward's Confederate force, eight hundred strong.
There had, by this time, been shown quite a disposition, among the Northern officers and troops in Kentucky, to interfere with and disaffect the slaves without regard to the political antecedents of their owners. After frequent complaint, Commandant Boyle issued an order forbidding all offi- cers and privates to interfere or intermeddle with the slaves in any way, or allow fugitive slaves to come into the Union camps. Congressman Charles A. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, in a published card requested Kentuck-
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
ians who had slaves taken from them by the United States army, to send him a sworn statement of the facts. His object was to have some law passed by which slaves thus wrongfully taken might be peaceably recovered or accounted for. Colonel John H. McHenry, of the Seventeenth Ken- tucky infantry, was about this time dismissed from the United States service for issuing an order returning slaves to their masters from his camp, in violation of an additional article of war.
1 In the language of a late historian : "This Confederate movement into Kentucky marks the high tide of the civil war, and the retreat of Bragg was a part of the great reflux of that wave. The crushing defeat of Nelson's forces by Kirby Smith came on the same day as the second Confederate victory at Manassas. The abandonment of Munfordville by Bragg, worse than a defeat, came about the same time of the great battle of Antietam. The battle of Perryville completed the dramatic campaigns which crowned the misfortune of the Confederacy. Both the army of the Potomac and the army of the West were compelled to retreat southward into their strong- holds. Their armies were checked, but not broken, and the Federal forces were not able to give a crushing pursuit to the forces they had beaten back. Far better than the Northern armies, the troops of the Confederacy with- stood the trials of defeat."
It now became imperative that Buell should make a timely march for the protection of Nashville, lest Bragg, penetrating Tennessee with an army yet formidable, might turn upon that important base and inflict a crushing blow in an exposed quarter. But the army which Buell had so successfully led was not destined to return to Nashville under his command. The bolt of wrath which had been forged at Washington was only suspended in its exe- cution for a time. The opportune time had come, and Buell was at last displaced from command of the army, and General Rosecrans, who had recently won some successes near Corinth, Mississippi, was appointed to succeed him. Both armies having reached safe destinations in Tennessee, a period of inaction ensued for the next two months. The only military operation of interest to this history, for the remainder of the year 1862, was another brief raid of Morgan's cavalry into Kentucky. On the 22d of December, he started on this adventure with about three thousand men. The lessons of experience had taught the Federal commanders to leave large garrisons at the important points on this line from Louisville to Nash- ville. There were more than thrice Morgan's numbers guarding the weak points of this line, but they were principally infantry troops, an arm that is worthless in dealing with such raids.
Slipping adroitly by the larger garrisons of the Federal forces, Morgan managed to capture first Glasgow, and then Elizabethtown. the garrison at the latter place surrendering without any serious struggle; next, though closely pursued, he captured the block-houses protecting the bridges at
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealths, P. 317 ; Duke's History.
640
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.
Muldraugh's hill, where he burned the trestlework and destroyed the track. "In this district, he destroyed two thousand two hundred and fifty feet of bridges. Thence he turned toward Bardstown, but finding strong bodies of troops at every important point, he made a swift retreat into Tennessee, without being brought to battle.
While crossing the Rolling Fork of Salt river, Morgan's rear guard and some detachments, amounting to about eight hundred men, were attacked by about seven thousand Federal troops. They should have been captured, - but by a brilliant attack on the advancing force, followed by a swift retreat, they were enabled to rejoin their command on the other side of the river.
Morgan's tactics were becoming suggestive to the other side, who began to imitate them. General Carter, with eleven hundred Federal cavalry, set out, on the 25th of December, for a raid through South-west Virginia. Striking the Tennessee & Virginia railroad, he destroyed the great bridge at Blountsville, and captured three hundred Confederate troops there, under Major McDowell. Turning westwardly, he next burned the bridge over the Wataga. This, with the injury done the track of the railroad in other ways, required many weeks to repair the line for transportation.
1 While this and other Federal cavalry raids of the kind had not the ยท brilliancy and skill of Morgan's, they became very effective in co-operation with the movements of the main armies against the Confederacy. Indeed, it is doubtful if the same number of men on either side, during the war, accomplished nearly as much as the troops of Morgan. His force, after the organization at Knoxville, numbered from eight hundred to thirty-five hun- dred, and did not average in the time two thousand men. Fed and foraged upon the enemy, it is fairly estimated that this force served to neutralize ten times their numbers on the side of the enemy. The originality of a blend- ing of the advantages of cavalry, infantry, and artillery into a concentrated unit of military power was, perhaps, never before as successfully done. His force was essentially horsed infantry in flying columns, with the support, when needed, of adequate artillery.
With the close of the year, the country was upon the eve of an event which, from the beginning of the war, had been regarded as inevitable by the more positive sentiment of both the Northern and Southern elements in this great contest, but which that class of Union men in the border Southern States had been encouraged to believe and had persuaded themselves would never be among the issues of the war. On the Ist day of January, 1863, President Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation, which he had announced in a qualified form before, on September 22, 1862 : " As a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion, I order and declare that all persons held as slaves within the designated States now in rebellion are and henceforward shall be free, and the military and naval authorities will recognize and maintain their freedom." It is true that this proclama-
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealths, p. 328.
41
642
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
tion nominally affected the institution of slavery only in the seceded States, and in its terms made an exception of Kentucky, yet the practical effect was to leave the institution a mere wreck in the sea of war in Kentucky. As pointedly said by Shaler, himself a Kentucky Unionist :
1 " This proclamation was felt as a blow by a large part of the Union people of Kentucky. Their view was that the rebels were breaking the Constitution, while the armies to which they were giving their support were endeavoring to maintain that contract. This proclamation was an act that put them, as well as their enemies, in an extra constitutional attitude. 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 rebel sympathies. The Union party and its Legislature, tenaciously cling- ing 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 flagrantly unjust forms-the taxing of 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 sympathizers were forced to make good were utterly beyond their control. No American people have ever been subjected to as iniquitous oppression as this system brought about. The other form of the evil arose from the interference of the military powers at the elections. 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 the 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.
"One of the most flagrant cases of interference with purely political action, but only one of very many, was that which took place in Frank- fort. A convention of the so-called Democratic party, composed of two hundred delegates from one-third of the counties, met to nominate a State ticket. They represented that portion of the people who were mostly in sympathy with the rebellion, though they honestly denied all thought of secession. They were refused the use of the legislative hall for their meetings by the Union Legislature, and were denounced by the Union papers as secessionists. Acting upon this public opinion, Colonel Gilbert proceeded to break up the convention by military force, ordering the delegates to leave the city, and to refrain from all 'seditious and noisy conversation.' This high-handed outrage had a great effect upon public opinion in Kentucky. The Senate passed a series of resolutions, on motion of Hon. Charles T.
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealths, p. 332.
643
DISAFFECTION AMONG UNION SUPPORTERS.
Worthington, to the effect that such interference was not desired by the Union men, and that it ' was dangerous in its tendencies, and should not pass unrebuked.' In the August election, there was the same interference on the part of the military with the election. This last outrage had not even the palliation of effectiveness. Only a few polling places were under the control of the troops. It exasperated the Union men without restraining the Confederate sympathizers. Thousands of Union men who had given their property and their blood to the cause of the Constitution lost heart and their interest in the struggle. They had supposed that they were fighting, not for the domination of armies, but for the maintenance of law, for the welfare of the country, and not for the supremacy of a political party that appeared willing to destroy the Commonwealth if it stood in the way of its purposes.
" So far from condemning this defection of spirit which came upon the people from the overthrow of their laws and subordination of their courts to the military arm, we should rather praise the independence of mind of men who, in the midst of battle, could keep in their hearts this reverence for the foundations of their political life."
These views from an intelligent source will strike one as dispassionate and just, yet in the emergencies which were born of a gigantic civil strife over the issues of national life and death, and on the disputed battle-ground of the two contending sections, it would be an anomaly in history if there were no instances of encroachments upon the constitutions and the laws, both Federal and State-not that there need be or should be, but such a war must stir the deepest passions of men, and of many men, who will be regardless and reckless of the restraints of constitutions and law when these stand in the way of the accomplishment of their purposes and desires. As will be seen further on, this fully-developed phase of the war had the effect more and more to estrange and divide the great Union majority element in the State, which hitherto had unitedly supported the Federal cause ; and this division, in time, assumed more decidedly the form of antagonism between the civil authorities of the State and the military command of the depart- ment of the Ohio, of which Kentucky was a part.
In the last days of December, the army of the Cumberland, having been massed at Nashville under its new commander, General Rosecrans, was put in readiness to meet again the army of General Bragg, then concentrated at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This important episode of the war does not legit- imately claim mention in Kentucky history, as it pertains to a contest upon the soil of another State, except for the numbers and distinction of Kentucky soldiers in both armies who took part in it. The cavalry forces of Morgan and of Forrest for two weeks had operated in the country around Nashville and on the lines of railroads diverging from that center, and as far out on the Louisville & Nashville railroad as Elizabethtown and Muldraugh's Hill, Kentucky, harassing the enemy, destroying his supplies, and cutting off his means of transportation. For the same length of time, General John C.
644
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Breckinridge had anticipated the arrival of Bragg's army and held Murfrees- boro with his division of four thousand men just from his campaign in the South-west. On December 31st, the Federal army, forty-five thousand strong, joined the issue of battle with that of General Bragg, numbering thirty-five thousand present. On that day, the Federal army was driven back, with heavy loss, from all its positions from two to three miles, leaving thirty-one pieces of artillery and the dead and wounded, with nearly four thousand prisoners, in the enemy's hands. The next day, these relative positions were held by the two armies, with but little further fighting. On January 2d, the third day of battle, General Breckinridge, having been ordered with his division to assault a strongly fortified position of the enemy, executed one of the bravest and most brilliant charges recorded in the his- tory of the war. The Federal forces were dislodged with the bayonet and driven in confusion and rout, with great slaughter. In following the retreat- ing foe, the victorious troops of the command were drawn into range of over fifty pieces of artillery, which poured a deadly fire of shot and shell into their ranks. Breckinridge was compelled to withdraw his forces from this murderous fire, which threatened them with annihilation. This he did in good order. The armies remained in position during the fourth day, doing but little fighting. Re-enforcements having reached the Federals, General Bragg quietly withdrew his army, taking with him his prisoners, captured guns, and stores. The Federal loss was about nine thousand killed and wounded, and four thousand missing. Of the Kentucky troops in the Fed- eral army, the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, Fifteenth, and Twenty-third regiments lost nine hundred and eleven men. The Confederate loss in killed and wounded was nearly nine thousand, of which Breckinridge's division lost twenty-one hundred and forty. Among those most lamented who fell in the ranks of this division was the brave and gallant General Hanson, whose death cast a gloom over the command with which he had most gallantly fought.
Roger W. Hanson was born at Winchester, Kentucky, August 27, 1827. His early life was that of the typical Kentucky boy of that day, marked with strong muscular activity, GENERAL ROGER W. HANSON. of impatient and imperious will, and of exuberant flow of spirits, a combi- nation of energies capable of bestowing great force of character, but very dangerous to a youth surrounded with an abundance of temptations and opportunities. At the age of twenty, he was among the first volunteers
4 1
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GENERAL PRESTON'S HEROISM.
for the Mexican war, and went out as first lieutenant in the company of Captain John S. Williams, which so distinguished its record in the storming of Cerro Gordo. At the close of this service, he returned to Winchester, and very soon after was wounded in the hips, in a duel with a gentleman, which gave him a limping gait for life. He devoted himself in this year to the study of law, but the California gold fever having broken out, he was one of the thousands who left home to seek sudden fortune in the modern Ophir, which had opened its wondrous treasures to the adventure and enterprise of the world. Disappointed, he returned to his Kentucky home and entered upon the practice of law. Some time after, he moved to Lexington. In 1856, he was one of the two electors-at-large on the Fillmore ticket. His forensic powers in this campaign gave him great reputation and prestige, and the next year he became the American candi- date for Congress, opposed by James B. Clay, the Democratic nominee, who proved also to possess rare powers of elocution and logic. Hanson was defeated and went back to his practice. In 1859-'60, he lent a powerful aid in the canvass of Joshua F. Bell for governor, and for Bell and Everett, the presidential Whig candidates. When the crisis of dis- union came, on the election of Mr. Lincoln, his convictions and sentiments were for the Union, and his voice was heard in behalf of its preservation- and against secession. Next, he leaned to the device of neutrality. Like myriads of others, his sympathies were Southern, and as he witnessed the demonstrations for coercion, and the wide and dangerous latitude assumed in measures therefor, he was at last induced to give his services, his heart, and finally his life for the cause of the South. He entered the Confederate service, and was made colonel of the Second Kentucky regiment, and after- ward promoted to be brigadier-general of the First Kentucky brigade. His- tory has followed his fortunes, with his command, from Bowling Green to Donelson, and from the South-west to Murfreesboro, where he gave up his life in the midst of a strife and carnage of battle, the fiercest and bloodiest of all civil wars.
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