USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 28
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I Duke's History, pp. 529-30.
654
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
horse in the daytime, who are paid, if paid at all, with waste paper, who have become hardened to the licentious practices of a cruel warfare-such - troops will be frequently tempted to violate the moral code. Many Confed- erate cavalrymen so situated left their commands altogether and became guerrillas, salving their consciences with the thought that the desertion was not to the enemy. These men, leading a comparatively luxurious life, and receiving from some people a mistaken and foolish admiration, attracted to the same career young men who would never have quitted their colors and their duties."
The methods and measures required to be executed in the progress of the war, and the constantly-increasing tendency to abusive military law- lessness, on the one hand, and to rebellious defiance, on the other, made the duties and responsibilities of commandant in Kentucky exceedingly unpleasant to a man of a high sense of honor. This position becoming dis- tasteful, General Boyle had resigned it, unfortunately for the people, only to be succeeded by men less worthy and scrupulous, whose corrupt abuse of power inaugurated a reign of spoliation, of civil violence, and of terror, as reprehensible in morals as were the doings of the guerrillas.
1 Shaler has so ably and pertinently, and so dispassionately, treated the two sides of the partisan history of military events in Kentucky, in the last year of the war, that we venture to quote him freely here :
"The desperation to which the people were brought by the system of guerrilla raids can hardly be described. In the year 1864, there was not a county in the State that was exempt from their ravages. The condition of the Commonwealth reminds the historical student of that which came with the thirty-years' war in Germany, and with the latter stages of the war between king and Parliament in England. It is the normal condition when a country is harried by the discords of a civil war, and especially when there are no longer large armies in the field.
"On the 4th of January, 1864, Governor Bramlette, late a Federal officer, who, at the outset of his political life, was opposed to such summary and unwarranted action, took the singular responsibility of ordering the arrest of the Confederate sympathizers, to be held as hostages for the return of all persons captured and detained by guerrillas. Great as was the need of protection from these freebooters, this proclamation was a serious trans- gression of the laws which the governor was sworn to maintain. and as such met the condemnation of a great part of the Union men. Afterward. the Legislature endeavored to secure the suppression of this evil by providing more numerous and more effective troops to be used for State defense. This Legislature voted the large sum of five million dollars for the purpose of paying for the adequate internal defense of the State.
"On July 16th, General Burbridge, under order of General Sherman. commanding the department, issued a sanguinary order of reprisals, requiring
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth. p. 345.
655
REVENGING THE DEATH OF SOLDIERS.
that whenever a citizen was killed by guerrillas, four prisoners chosen from this class of marauders were to be taken to the place where the deed was done, and in retaliation shot to death. The difficulty was that it was impossible to determine among a lot of prisoners who belonged to a properly-commis- sioned command, and who were simply brigands. Under the order, many executions took place, some of men who probably were to be classed as Confederate soldiers. The brutal violence of this plan made it extremely distasteful to all fair-minded people. It was carried out without even the semblance of law given by the proceedings of a court-martial. Nor had it the sorry merit of success. It merely gave an additional bitterness to a contest that was becoming a reproach to the name of the race."
Our space permits but brief mention of a few of the bloody executions and incidents which followed the issuance of General Burbridge's order.
1 In July, two rebel prisoners were taken from Louisville to Henderson and shot to death, in retaliation for wounding of Mr. Rankin. Eighteen thousand dollars were collected from his Southern neighbors for indemnity, not a dollar of which Rankin would receive.
Two other prisoners were similarly sent to Russellville, to be shot on the spot where Mr. Porter died from wounds received in defending himself from guerrillas, on July 28th.
William Long. William Tythe, William Darbro, and R. W. Vates, four prisoners, were brought from Lexington to Pleasureville and shot to death, in retaliation for the alleged killing of colored men in another part of the county. The bodies of the prisoners shot were left lying unburied for a day, when they were taken by neighbors and interred in the cemetery at Eminence.
On the 15th, George Wainscott, and William and John Lingenfelter were shot at Williamstown, on account of the killing of Joel Skirvin and Andrew Simpson by guerrillas.
Richmond Berry and May Hamilton were similarly executed at Bloom- field. in retaliation for the killing of J. R. Jones.
J. Bloom and W. B. McClasshan were taken from Louisville and shot at Franklin, on the 20th, in retaliation for some killing done by guerrillas.
In retaliation for the shooting by Captain Sue Munday's guerrillas of a Federal soldier, near Jeffersontown, Kentucky, W. Lilly, S. Hatley, M. Briscoe, and Captain L. D. Buckner, were ordered to be taken by Captain Hackett, of the Twenty-sixth Kentucky, and shot to death on the spot.
Cheney and Jones were taken from the military prison. at Louisville, and shot at Munfordville, Kentucky, in retaliation for the killing, by guerrillas, of J. M. Morry, of the Thirteenth Kentucky infantry.
James Hopkins, J. W. Sipple, and Sam Stagdale, were similarly shot near Bloomfield, for the killing of two negroes by Sue Munday's men, with which they had nothing to do.
Collins' Annals of Kentucky.
656
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
McGee and Ferguson were taken out of the prison at Lexington, and hung, by order of Burbridge.
W. C. Martin. W. B. Dunn, J. Edmonson, J. M. Jones, W. L. Robin- son, J. Tomlinson, A. V. Tudor, and S. Turley, were taken from Louisville prison to Munfordville, to be shot to death in similar manner.
Six confederates were shot to death by order of Burbridge, at Osceola, Green county, in retaliation for the killing of two Union men by others.
On the 4th of September, Frank M. Holmes and three other prisoners were shot at Brandenburg, for the killing of Mr. Henry, near that place, by guerrillas.
Four other prisoners were similarly shot at Frankfort, four at Midway, and others elsewhere, for similar reasons.
As but rarely a real guerrilla was taken alive and reached the door of a prison, the unfortunate men thus ruthlessly borne out and massacred in cold blood, without trial or investigation before any sort of tribunal, were mainly prisoners of war, and entitled to the considerations of such. The summary executions were wanton murders, and without palliation. The effect of these official crimes, together with the spoliations, robberies, and tyrannies of the same men in authority, brought the perpetrators, in their characters and deeds, upon the same moral level with the guerrillas, on the other side. Between the two, no citizen, of Federal or Confederate sympathy, felt any longer safely protected in life, in liberty of action, or in property. The terrors of apprehension, and the incertitude of anarchy, gloomily hung upon the spirits of all. The great mass of the Union citizenship, of pure heart and intent, with indignant protest, deplored the disgrace brought upon their cause; while their neighbors of opposing sentiment repudiated the murder- ous and thieving depredations done by the guerrilla bands, and suffered in submission. We quote again from Shaler:
1 " In the August election, the interference of the militia with the polling was even more serious than in the previous year. In the election period an extensive series of military arrests were begun. designed to overawe those who were disposed to criticise the action of the military commanders. This system of provost-marshal government so disgusted the people that a ma- jority of them, though retaining their loyalty, could no longer be trusted to vote for the candidates approved, and almost nominated. by the Federal commanders. Fortunately, the election of the year was not of a general character, or the result would have given encouragement to the rebellion, by showing that the Union men were now divided into two distinct divisions, the smaller part made up of those who were willing to go to any extremity in their toleration of the arbitrary acts of a provost-marshal system, that gave effect to the oppressive and often brutal humor of the courts of war ; and another larger part who, believing that the immediate danger from the armed enemy was over, were disposed to give their principal attention to
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth p. 246.
5
657
CRUELTY TO THE HELPLESS.
the men who were undermining the foundations of civil government within the Commonwealth.
" The only office of importance that was to be filled at the August elec- tion of 1864 was that of judge of the Court of Appeals for the Third district. Alvin Duvall was a candidate for re-election ; his course as a jurist was satisfactory to a large part of the people, and he was renominated for the office. Although he had in no public way indicated any sympathy for the rebellion, he was not regarded as a strong Union man. If the matter had been left to the people, it is likely that he would have been defeated at the polls. The military authorities resolved to have him arrested just before the election, but he escaped from the State, and went beyond their control. They then ordered that he should not be allowed to stand as a candidate, and put troops at the polls to enforce this order, their aim being to secure the election of M. M. Benton, whom the Federal officers had adopted as their candidate. To defeat this end the conservative Union men nominated Judge Robertson, telegraphing his nomination on the morning of the elec- tion to the polling places. As the military guards had no orders to refuse the tender of votes for Judge Robertson, he was elected as a protest against the arbitrary action of the military arm ; a large number of citizens testified their disgust by remaining away from the polls.
" This iniquitous system of interference with the civil law had now pretty thoroughly separated the better class of the Union men from all sympathies with the Federal Government. But worse was yet to come. In all the campaigns and battles in Kentucky, there had always been shown the utmost consideration for women and children. The soldiers of both armies, be it said to their great honor, were singularly considerate to them. Even when the battles raged through the towns, as they often did, the non-combatant class was tenderly cared for.
" But in 1864, the provost marshals of the State, mostly men who were not soldiers in any proper sense. who had none of the better traditions of war, began to arrest and imprison on charges of sympathy with the rebellion, correspondence with the enemy, and the like. Women, with their children, were banished from the State to Canada under a guard of negro soldiers or sent to prison. Women whose children, brothers, and husbands were in the Confederate army, or dead on its battlefields, were naturally given to utter- ing much treason in their speech ; but it was a pitiable sight to see the power of the Federal Government turned against these helpless sufferers.
"While the treatment of non-combatants, old men, women, and children, and the interference of the Federal troops with elections, was the principal grievance of the conservative Union men. there was another source of trouble of a more truly political nature. which served to increase the disaf- fection of the Kentuckians with the ways of the Federal authorities.
"The Federal Government had engaged to leave slavery as it found it in Kentucky and elsewhere. Although there was a certain amount of dis-
4 2
658
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
gust when the emancipation proclamation came out, it did not in itself make an enduring impression on the minds of the Union men; but when, in 1864, the Government began to enlist negro troops in Kentucky, the people be- came greatly excited over the matter. Up to this date, the Commonwealth had met the requisitions for troops to carry on the war with a promptness and loyalty unsurpassed by any other State. They naturally considered it as an insult that their slaves, even though such in name only, should be taken from them and put into the army with their own volunteer soldiers. Although this state of feeling will probably not commend itself as reason- able to those who were born in non-slave-holding communities, it was very natural in the Kentuckians. To them. military service had always been an honorable occupation, open only to those of the masterful race. They had refused to take into their service any recruits from the free negroes of the State. This blow at their military pride was keenly felt.
"The action of the Federal Government in this matter of enlisting slaves was singularly vacillating. Again and again the process was begun, and abandoned on account of remonstrances of the State authorities. It was an unprofitable experiment; the enlistment of white troops was made difficult ; a few thousand blacks were secured, but they never proved of much service to the Federal army.
"This bitterness between the conservative Union men and the Federal commander grew to such height that in September, 1864, there was grave danger of an actual revolt of the Kentuckians against their oppressors. The State authorities were now fairly arrayed against the Federal provost-mar- shals and their following. General Hugh Ewing, commanding the district, had ordered the county courts to levy a tax sufficient to arm and pay fifty men in each county. His order was answered by Governor Bramlette, who, in a proclamation, forbade the county courts giving effect to the order. Although Governor Bramlette represented the ultra-Union men, there can be no doubt that he would have striven to maintain his position by the use of force. Governor Bramlette was reported at this time on the point of is- suing a proclamation recalling the Kentucky troops from the field. Lincoln revoked Ewing's order, and so this critical point was passed. At the same time, an examination was ordered into the conduct of certain knaves, who had for months ruled Western Kentucky in a fashion that had not had its parallel since the tyrannies of the Austrian Haynau. A commission, com- posed of General Speed Fry and Colonel John Mason Brown, checked the iniquities and made such a showing that General E. A. Paine. Colonel H. W. Barry, of the Eighth United States Negro Artillery, and Colonel Mc- Chesney, of Illinois, and a number of subordinate officers were removed. It was charged that they had been guilty of extreme cruelty and extortion."
'After a thorough investigation, Commissioners Brown and Fry, both Union men of the highest integrity,. reported that Paine's violence and men-
1 Report accompanying Governor Bramlette's message, House Journal, 1865.
----- 4
..
few
659
DISGUST AMONG THE HOME GUARDS.
aces had compelled many peaceful and orderly citizens to abandon their homes, His harsh and brutal language, with constant vulgarity and blas- phemy toward gentlemen and ladies of refinement, his robbery and extor- tions of citizens, his summary arrest and imprisonment of citizens against whom not an earthly charge could be made, and his seizure and execution of prisoners and citizens without charges and trials, were among acts of no- torious infamy which were fully proven. The number of persons who had suffered death at his hands from summary execution was stated by some to be as high as forty-three, and the graves were shown to prove it. The com- mission furnished sworn testimony that Paine and five or six high official confederates were guilty of corruption, bribery, and malfeasance in office. To escape consequences, General Paine and his subordinates fled to Illinois, from whence they originally came. A Colonel McChesney, at Mayfield, One Hundred and Thirty-Fourth Illinois, was found to have also executed some men, four of whom were citizens-Kesterton, Taylor, Mathey, and Hess-without a shadow of trial, and had collected large sums of money from citizens by forcing them to do hard manual labor on useless entrench- ments, unless they purchased immunity by paying from five dollars to four hundred each. General Meredith, who succeeded Paine, turned fifty-one prisoners loose at Mayfield and many more at Paducah.
Shaler further says : "These blows at the system of inflictions were not to do more than subdue, for a moment, the worst forms of the evil. This was too deep-seated for easy remedy. General Burbridge had an over- bearing spirit. He gathered around him a set of advisers who, it was asserted, acting as a secret inquisition, sent many Union men into prison or banishment, simply because they protested against the Federal outrages. A sort of fury seemed to possess many men hitherto of good qualities as citizens or soldiers.
" So far from these brutal reprisals diminishing the evils of the guerrilla warfare, it grew each day to be a more crying evil. The Home Guards, which before had carried on a tolerably effective defense against these bands, became disgusted with the inefficiency and opposition of the Federal com- manders. A vast number of bandit gangs, nominally in the Confederate army, but really without any control from commissioned officers. roamed over the State in all directions, robbing, murdering. and burning as they went. It seemed, for a time, as if civil government would be broken to pieces by these two mortal foes to order-the guerrillas and the provost- marshals. Even the small bands of Federal soldiers pursuing the guerrillas learned so far to imitate their ways that Burbridge himself was compelled to issue an order providing severe punishments for outrages by the Union troops. All these accumulating evils showed how true was the instinct of the people of Kentucky, who strove to keep the machinery of their civil sys- tem intact. There is a government by armies and a government by citizens, but the two can never be blended without the utmost danger to the State.
.
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660
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
"It is the painful duty of the historian to go yet further in the history of this pernicious system that was developed by General Burbridge's agents. All that he did in the effort to suppress the guerrillas, and to clear the State of treason, may be set down as grave blunders of a brave, well-meaning, though most misguided, soldier. The next series of acts had, it was gen- erally believed, the purpose of improperly taking money from the farmers of the State.
"The first step, in this new class of inflictions, was to order the farmers to sell their hogs to designated agents at a fair price; next, Burbridge com- manded that no hogs should be sent out of the State without a special permit, and should be sold to the aforesaid specified agents. These agents offered a price considerably below that paid in the Cincinnati market. The ostensible reason of this action was that the Federal Government had given a contract to certain parties in Louisville to furnish one hundred thousand head of swine, and that, if the farmers were allowed to sell in their natural markets, the contractors would not be able to obtain a sufficient supply.
" General Burbridge's agents supported this demand by many threats of confiscation and other penalties. Naturally, the beginning of a system of confiscation of private property aroused an even more general and furious indignation than the mere political acts of oppression. Here again the pro- tests of the State Government were heard by Lincoln, and, after about a month of wrestle with the evil, Burbridge's famous 'hog order' was revoked by the Federal Government. Notwithstanding the revocation of this order, General Burbridge was retained in command for some months afterward, and the citizens were yet to suffer for some months under this man more exasperating inflictions than came to them from the honorable war of other years. There can be no doubt that the people of Kentucky endured far more outrage from the acts of the Federal provost-marshals than they did from ali the acts of the legitimate war put together."
The remaining military events during 1864 and to the close of the war, in Kentucky, were not of important character. General Forrest attacked Paducah on the 25th of March, in full force. Colonel Hicks, in defense, with two regiments and a battalion, retired into Fort Anderson, and refused a demand for surrender. He was supported by the United States gunboats Peosta and Pawpaw. After two days of siege and attack, the Confederates were compelled to retire, with considerable loss, but not until they had destroyed the Federal headquarters, quartermaster's and commissary's build- ings and stores, and done much other damage. The Federal loss was one hundred men. About October ist. General Burbridge, in command of four thousand Federal troops, including Colonel Graham's Eleventh and Colonel Weatherford's Thirteenth Kentucky cavalry, and Colonel Maxwell's Twenty-sixth, Colonel Alexander's Thirtieth, Colonel Starling's Thirty-fifth, Colonel Hanson's Thirty-seventh, Colonel Mim's Thirty-ninth. Colonel True's Fortieth, and Colonel Clark's Forty-fifth, mounted infantry, and
661
ATTACK ON SALTVILLE.
Major Quiggins' Sandy Valley Guards, marched out of Kentucky through Pound Gap, for the purpose of attacking and capturing the important works at Saltville, Virginia. This place was defended by a force of two thousand Confederates, in command of General John S. Williams, including a small brigade of Kentuckians, under Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge. The advance of Burbridge from Pound Gap had been contested stubbornly and gallantly by a cavalry force of Colonel Henry Giltner, the engagements at Clinch mountain and Laurel Gap assuming the importance of battles. On the 2d of October, the attack on Saltville occurred. The fighting for some hours was spirited and desperate on both sides. General Williams, in the center of his command, rallied and enthused his men, and held them steadily to the front with that courage and gallantry which had ever distinguished him in the war, until the Federals were beaten back time and again, and finally driven from the field, with a loss of nearly four hundred men. General Burbridge retreated in disorder to Kentucky, pursued by the har- assing Confederates.
The war was virtually ended in Kentucky early in 1864, excepting the , petty, and aimless, and needless strifes of the provost-marshal forces and the guerrillas on the aggressive side, and the harassed and suffering citizen- ship on the submissive. The seventy-five thousand Kentucky troops in both the Federal and Confederate armies, in actual and necessary field service, had drifted beyond the borders of Kentucky, and were now dispersed and incorporated among the great contending forces that were marching and fighting in the Virginias and Tennessee, in Georgia and the Carolinas, and the extreme South-west on either side of the Mississippi river. They were yielding up their lives by the scores, the hundreds and the thousands, in frequent skirmishes and smaller battles incidental to cavalry raids, to scouting service, and to picket duty, and in the great battles of Chicka- mauga, of Mission Ridge, of Lookout mountain, of Kennesaw mountain, of Vicksburg, of Franklin, of Nashville, and in others on the march of Sher- man to the sea. On the Potomac and around Richmond, the great battles of Gettysburg, Bermuda Hundred, Drury's Bluff, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Winchester, and Cedar creek, had distinctly marked the episodes of the war. In the earliest months of 1865, the beginning of the end of this mightiest civil struggle of all history and of all time was apparently nigh. The signs of exhaustion, of discouragement, and des- peration of hope were manifest throughout the invaded and sundered realms of the Confederacy. The last recruits had gone to her decimated and wasted armies, her sources of army supplies were overrun and devas- tated by the advancing Federal hosts, and there was little left to postpone the inevitable result but the dauntless and heroic courage of the remnants of those armies of Lee, and Jackson, and Longstreet in the East, and of the Johnstons, and Hardee, and Kirby Smith in the West, which had for
662
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
four years commanded the admiration of the world for their deeds of valor and heroism.
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