USA > Tennessee > The military annals of Tennessee. Confederate. First series: embracing a review of military operations, with regimental histories and memorial rolls, V.1 > Part 25
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From Murfreesboro the army fell back to Tullahoma and Shelbyville. The Sixth and Ninth were at Shelbyville, where the boys had a good time, but got a touch of the scurvy from too much salt meat and Lincoln county whisky. I do not mean to insinuate that Lincoln county whisky is likely to produce scurvy, but simply that salt meat and Lincoln county whisky are a little objectionable as a steady diet. But the boys were relieved of the threatened malady in a rather novel way. In the early spring, under the orders of Surgeon John S. Fenner, the boys were marched out into the budding woods and the fragrant fields every day for weeks, and ordered to chew certain green things and grass. This was kept up until the commissariat could furnish a change of diet in the shape of eatable beef and occasional vegetables. The boys recovered, and spent the remainder of the time at Shelbyville betwixt skirmishes and love-making, drilling and joking. Here it should be said of Surgeon Dr. John S. Fenner that he was not only effi- cient professionally, but that he was heroic in the discharge of his duty on every field. He served from the first to the last, and no peril or exposure ever for a moment deterred him from the discharge of duty.
The retreat from Middle Tennessee to Chattanooga and Dalton was not men- orable for any thing except good order and much grumbling-a paradox not in- frequent in the army while commanded by Gen. Bragg, and later when under Gen. Hood. Patriotism and discipline insured orderly retreats, but did not sup- press criticism and complaints more or less lond at failures to improve splendid victories or to use inviting opportunities. There were many, however, who held
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firm faith in Gen. Bragg's genius, and attributed his failure to improve victories to the sloth or incompetency of subordinates. One thing is certain, no General in the West fought battles more brilliantly than Gen. Braxton Bragg.
The battle of Chickamauga was the next engagement of any note in which the Sixth and Ninth took part. Col. Porter, Lieut .- col. Buford, and Maj. Wilder were in command. Maney's brigade, or rather Cheatham's division, of which the Sixth and Ninth were a part, were the first infantry troops seriously engaged in this battle. The battle was fought September 19th and 20th, 1863. The regi- ment was hotly engaged most of the first day, and its losses were very heavy. At one time the division moved on the enemy ( who were massed in the thick woods behind an open field) through a skirt of timber, much of which had been cut down and was lying in tangled masses on the ground. The enemy's artillery played with effect upon the disordered line of advance, and the moment the field was gained, and while yet the line was in confusion, Thomas's entire corps, with several batteries, opened on Cheatham's devoted division. The Sixth and Ninth were in the very hottest of the fray. To advance was madness, to stand was nearly as bad; but this grand division did stand, and, with a gal- lantry never surpassed, held the enemy at bay for an hour. Finally Thomas's whole corps charged the thin line of Confederates, and forced them back. But before they gave way the enemy had lapped around both flanks of the divis- ion, and were pouring a deadly enfilading fire down the line. The division fell back a half mile and re-formed, being joined by Cleburne's division, which relieved Cheatham's flank. The two divisions then drove Thomas's corps steadily and gallantly until night closed the scene. The Sixth and Ninth were in the most trying position during this engagement, and lost heavier than any regiment in the division in proportion to numbers. And it is claimed by many of the reg- iment that it was the last in the line to yield, and that the enemy was right in among them before they gave way. This incident will illustrate the closeness of the engagement. Drew Brock, of Company L, was captured. Among his cap- tors was an officer who took him in special charge. With this officer Brock drift- ed off some hundred yards from the main line. The officer was very thirsty, and Brock showed him a spring. The poor fellow knelt down to drink a cooling draught, and as he did so Brock seized a rock and struck him in the back of the head, killing him, and then escaped by hiding in the bush hard by. The Confed- erates advancing soon after found Brock and the dead officer. It is claimed by the best soldiers of Cheatham's division that this was the first and last time the enemy ever saw the back of Cheatham's Tennesseans in an engagement. The division was so severely cut up in the first day's battle that it was held in reserve on the second. It was under artillery fire frequently, and occasionally drove back an assault or strengthened a weak point, but it was not seriously engaged until late in the afternoon, when the Sixth and the Ninth and the First regiments charged a line of low log breastworks held by the Eighteenth Regulars, the Tenth Wisconsin, and another regiment, carrying the position with a storm, and driving the enemy in confusion before them. Lieut .- col. Ely, of the Tenth Wis- consin, was here mortally wounded and captured, but during his last hours he was tenderly nursed by members of the First Tennessee, to whom he had been kind when they were wounded and captured at Perryville. 'This touching incident and many like it occurring throughout the civil struggle were silver linings ip
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the cloud of war, and served to show that in the fiercest and most dreadful hours human sympathy and brotherhood were not dead, and that the noblest instincts were as living fountains in the hearts of the combatants, that might be touched and made to bless, despite strife and blood.
After the battle of Chickamauga Cheatham's division was broken up, because it was composed entirely of Tennesseans, and in battle its losses were too severe for one State to sustain. At Chickamauga it had suffered more than any divis- ion, according to strength, and the loss on a single State was deemed out of fair proportion. The order, however, caused deep and loud discontent.
In the battle of Missionary Ridge Gen. Maney's brigade occupied the right wing, over or near the tunnel of the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad, where a bat- tery of twelve guns was stationed. It was supposed to be the most vulnerable position in the line. The brigade was formed in two lines. In the front line was the First Tennessee and -. In the second line was the Sixth and Ninth and ---- , the Sixth and Ninth supporting the First. It was only slightly engaged, although under fire most of the day. The position was charged seven times, but the First Regiment held its place, the Sixth and Ninth only appearing for a few minutes from time to time when the peril was greatest. Right here I wish to say that from frequent conversations with members of the Sixth and Ninth, as well as from general history, I am proud to testify that there was not, in courage and morale, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, a regiment superior to the First Tennessee, under Col. Field. This fact is due, first, to the fine material of which the regiment was composed, and largely also to the splendid military parts and brilliant courage of Col. Field. The position held by Maney's brigade on Mis- sionary Ridge was never taken. The brigade did not know until 8 or 9 o'clock at night that the Confederate army had been defeated. It was then cut off from all open lines of retreat, and was forced to press guides and escape through fields and forests and by circuitous routes.
The morning after the retreat from Missionary Ridge Maney's brigade found itself, weary and foot-sore, near Graysville, at Cat's Creek, but in front of the en- emy. In a little while Hooker's corps came up and made an attack, which the tired brigade gallantly repulsed. In this brilliant little affair the Sixth and Ninth bore a conspicuous part. Gen. Maney was wounded here. The following circumstances occurring near this point were related by Orderly Sergeant W. H. Bruton, of Company A, Sixth Regiment. The brigade found the bridge across Chickamauga River at Graysville burned, and that deep little stream swollen. The night was dark and bitter cold. Close in their rear could be heard the dull rolling of artillery carriages, and upon either side the enemy's cavalry could be heard taking positions on the rocky roads which ran parallel. Gloomier still, the weary soldiers could hear the splash and plunge of their own artillery as it was abandoned and rolled into the river. More gloomy than all this, they could hear men riding off on the artillery horses, evidently bent on escaping a pressing peril. Gen. Gist, of Georgia, had come up and assumed command. He had evidently made up his mind to surrender, or rather to have the gallant men to do so. Soon the order came down the weary lines to "stack arms." Gen. Gist and his staff then rode off, and the brigade firmly believed that it was abandoned to its fate, and that seemed to be death or surrender. The men fully appreciated the peril, and were determined not to surrender without a struggle. At this juncture Col.
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Farquaharson, of the Fourth Tennessee Confederate Regulars, came up and pro- posed to lead the brigade out. The men promptly resumed their arms, and strip- ping, placed their clothes on their bayonets, and thus quietly forded the river. the icy waters coming up to the necks of most of them, and forcing some to swin .. But the brigade succeeded in crossing, and their fires on "the hills beyond the flood" were the first notice the enemy had that their prey had escaped.
At sunup the next morning the travel-worn, battle-begrimed brigade passel into the lines of its own army, through Cleburne's division drawn up at Ringgold to receive Hooker's pursuing corps. Cleburne's men warmly greeted and cheered the gallant brigade as it marched safely through its lines.
The terrible repulse experienced by Hooker's corps a few months later, at the hands of Cleburne's immortal division, is one of the proudest chapters in the South's history. The successful retreat of Maney's brigade was a nine-days won- der, heightened as it was by the fact that the men bore every one of their wound- ed officers and comrades with them in safety to Ringgold. Col. Farquaharson was the hero of the hour, and the boys to this day never weary telling of this perilous and terrible retreat, in which the privates outgeneraled their own Gener- al and the enemy.
On reaching Dalton the feeling among the various regiments and brigades that composed Cheatham's old division became so intense on the subject of a reunion, or the reestablishment of the division, that a most complimentary general order was issued by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the division to be formel as of old. This feeling received a kind of halo from the events of Missionary Ridge and the retreat. During that battle every point at which a brigade of the old division was placed was successfully held to the last, and in the retreat the night of the battle, and the next day, several brigades of the division drifted to- gether and joined themselves with " Mars Frank." Many of the boys saw the hand of Providence in this strange chance, and their demand for restoration was stimulated by a kind of superstition, or religious enthusiasm. At all events. the restoration was made, and the meeting of the brigades in camp at Dalton was one of the sublimest occasions in the history of the war. They cheered and en- braced each other with feeling, and when Gen. Cheatham appeared among them they gathered around him with shouts of joy. The General was very much af- fected, and found himself unable to speak the promptings of his heart; but he took from his pocket a gold coin, and tossing it in the air, while his eyes rained tears, exclaimed, "Boys, you are as good as that !"
In the brilliant retrograde movement from Dalton, under Gen. Joe Johnston, Cheatham's division divided honors with Cleburne's in the perilous duty of rear- guard. Almost daily there were events of interest. At Resaca the division was engaged on the 15th of May, and repulsed the enemy and drove them a mile. At New Hope there were skirmishes. The Sixth and Ninth were posted in a grave-yard, which position was assaulted repeatedly by the enemy, but which was held to the last by the regiment. The boys say that this was a grave-yard en- gagement, and that they were never before or afterward so suggestively situated. They stood in the midst of graves and grew fruit at the muzzle of muskets for more graves. They made breastworks of tombstones, and sheltered behind the mounds that sepulchered innocence and childhood; they fought and died and tri- umphed amid the tombs of a generation that had not dreamed of civil war.
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The next battle in which the Sixth and Ninth took conspicuous part was on the Kennesaw line. Here it was daily under fire from June 25th to the night . i July 2d. On June 27th it held the left angle of the famous "Dead Point," the First Tennessee holding the right angle, in front of which the severest fighting occurred. These positions were maintained until the army withdrew on the night of the 3d of July. During the fearful struggle of the 27th, when the Fed- erals swarmed in front of the angle held by the First Tennessee, and threw them- selves upon it en masse, at the most critical moment the Sixth and Ninth was ordered to the breach, and came up in gallant style to the assistance of the First. The enemy were driven back with great slaughter, aml the First gallantly de- claring its ability to hold the line, the Sixth and Ninth resumed their original position. In their right front the enemy lay thick on the ground. The right was the old Sixth part of the regiment, and it is entitled to share a portion of the lionors of the wonderful defense. The annals of war hardly produce a par- allel to this prolonged and fierce struggle. The Confederates at this point were intrenched behind rifle-pits with log encrownments, on a slope of Kennesaw Mountain. The frail works, by some oversight or in the haste of construction, were placed within about fifty yards of a bluff easy of approach, and behind which the enemy could form in comparative safety for a dash on the Confederate lines; and this was done. The enemy massed under this bluff and dashed repeatedly on the "Dead Angle," to be gloriously repulsed, and with terrible slaughter. At one time they came at the Confederates seven lines deep, the men having teen freely supplied with whisky to make them more desperate. They came with a rush, like ocean waves driven by a hurricane, trampling their own dead and wounded, sweeping on as if by an irresistible impulse, to dash and break and reel and die against the Confederate works, and stagger back like drunken men, bro- ken and routed. In this charge many Federals gained the top of the rude works assailed, to be hurled off by clubbed muskets or on the points of bayonets. The steadiness of the thin line of Confederates, their unflinching firmness, their matchless nerve, rose to the sublimest heights of martyrdom. It may be fairly doubted if any other troops on earth would have made such a charge, and none oth- ers on earth could have successfully resisted such an overmatched and desperate assault.
During this assault D. A. Whitehorn, a Color-bearer in the Federal line, fell across the Confederate works as he planted his flag and turned to wave his com- rades on. This flag was a trophy of the brave defenders of the "Dead Angle" to the close of the war, and the gallant Whitehorn's canteen, belt, cartridge-vos, short-sword, etc., became souvenirs of priceless value. W. H. Bruton, Orderly Sergeant of Co. H, and George T. Fortune, of the same company, Sixth Regiment, fell leirs to the brave Color-bearer's mess-spoon, and used it to the end of the war. It is due to these brave men to say that they cherished this souvenir of a gallant enemy befittingly, and always paid to it a chivalrous respect in honor of the gal- lant foe to whom it had belonged.
During the siege of Atlanta the Sixth and Ninth were daily on duty, and occa- sionally under very heavy artillery fire. The men were under artillery fire, more ur less, day and night, and several were killed by shells as they lay sleeping. and dreaming it may be of distant homes, and of a peace whose blessings they were not to know in this life, but which, may we not hope, they and others who fell ec-
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joy in beatific visions from the spirit-land and on the farther shore of "time to be." Among those struck dead while sleeping, was Joe Cock, of Co. H. He was asleep beside his Captain-A. B. Jones -- when a shell struck and instantly killed him, his warm blood bespattering Captain Jones as it flowed freely from his warm, quivering, breathless body.
The battles of the 21st and 22d of July, fought under the orders of Gen. Hood, were remarkable for desperation and dash on the part of the Confederates engaged, and for steadiness and splendid discipline on the part of the Federals. Sherman's left wing was to be turned, and his rear threatened so as to force him back from Atlanta, or to fight a general battle at right angles with his line of advance and retreat. Cheatham's and Cleburne's divisions formed the extreme of the Confed- crate right, and were to do the principal fighting; but an attack in another quarter was to be the signal of assault for them, and this was delayed so long that the enemy discovered the movement on their left and rear and formed their lines and dug rifle-pits to resist the assault. Hence, instead of taking the enemy by sur- prise and in reverse on the 22d, Cheatham and Cleburne found McPherson's corps
prepared for the assault. The fighting was most brilliant and desperate. These two crack Confederate divisions vied with each other, and fairly raced for the honor of being first to gain the enemy's works. They swept forward to the assault like a storm on the sea, and carried every thing before them. The enemy's frail works were carried at the point of the bayonet after a series of desperate hand-to-hand contests. Gen. McPherson, the heroic and brilliant commander of the Federal corps, fell while rallying his troops to renewed exertions. Col. Walker, of the Nineteenth Tennessee, who commanded Maney's old brigade of which the Sixth and Ninth formed a part, fell leading the brigade. In this assault Maney's bri- gade claimed to have been first that passed the enemy's works, and to have pressed farther forward than any portion of the Confederate line. The Federals were driven a half mile or more, and if other assaulting columns had done as well as Cheatham's and Cleburne's, or had they been timely reenforced, Sherman's lett would have been turned and his whole army probably defeated. The Sixth and Ninth were in the line that swept over where Gen. McPherson fell, and a splen- did battery captured fell to the credit of their brigade. In this charge George W. Darden (son of Col. Darden, of Henderson county, who was the largest man in the world, weighing over seven hundred pounds), of Co. G, Sixth Regiment, fell mortally wounded with his back to the earth and feet to the foe. He was a brave and eccentric man; generous to a fault, yet he was without faith in Chris- tianity, and led the life of a wanderer and a waif. He served in the Mexican war with credit when very young. His eccentricity and reckless nerve did not forsake him as he lay dying on that field of blood. Near him was a terribly wounded Federal, whose cries were heart-rending. These cries greatly disturbed Darden, who had composed himself to die, as he said, in peace. He appealed to the wounded Federal to keep quiet and die like a man. He said: " You disturb me very much. I am wounded nnto death as well as you. An hour at most and both of us will have passed away, and for the sake of a common manhood let us die calmly and like men of courage." But the wails and groans of the desper- ately wounded Federal in nowise abated. Darden, with a great effort, dragged himself to the wounded Federal, and, after examining his wounds carefully, said: "Friend, you can't live long; your sufferings are great, and you will not let me
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die peacefully. Hence, for the sake of both of us, I will end your agonies." And with these words he raised himself as well as he could, placed a loaded rite to the Federal soldier's breast and fired. The soldier died without a struggle, and Darden laid himself calmly by his side, pillowed his head against a stump, and remarking, " Now I can die in peace," passed away without a sound or struggle, or a prayer that any one ever heard. All this was observed and heard by wounded men of the regiment who lay near the scene. The impression on their minds was deep, and the story is repeated at every gathering of the survivors of that terrible battle to this day.
At Jonesboro, Ga., on August 26th, the regiment next met the enemy in over- whelming numbers, and who would, but for their wholesome respect for the ter- rific fighting qualities of Cheatham's and Cleburne's divisions, have captured the "thin gray line" that held them in check for hours. The Sixth and Ninth were not, however, very heavily engaged at this point. The principal fighting was done by Gen. Gordon's brigade, Cheatham's division. I am told that more brill- iant work was never performed than did Gordon's brigade on this occasion. A remarkable feat, however, was performed by a member of the Sixth and Ninth. During the heavy artillery fire which the regiment sustained during much of the day, a cannon-ball came bounding across a rolling plain directly toward W. H. Bruton, Orderly Sergeant of Co. H. It was touching the ground in high places. Bruton saw it coming, and realized his peril in an instant. There was barely a moment for reflection. That was enough, however. To jump to either side was impracticable, to stand still was to lose both legs, and probably life; so Bruton, with exact calculation, leaped high into the air, and the deadly missile passed under him, striking and demolishing a half-rotten stump about a hundred yards in the rear. It is claimed that this feat is without parallel, and Mr. Bruton stands alone in history as the successful jumper of a cannon-ball. A sharp engagement followed this at Lovejoy on the 27th and 28th of August, and then the dark movement to Tennessee began.
Of the long march through Georgia and Alabama and into Tennessee-the skirmishes and hardships-I will say nothing here; nor is it my province to cri :- icise that campaign, or to say where and when mistakes were made. I go direct to the great and unprecedentedly bloody battle of Franklin, where Cheatham's old division of Tennesseans sealed with blood and stamped with glory forever its record of steady, dashing, heroic courage. The battle of Franklin was fought November 30, 1864. The Federals, under Gen. Schofield, occupied a strong nat- ural position, which they made stronger by first-class earth-works. The ap- proaches were through open fields from a mile to a mile and a half in width. In front of the position assaulted by Cheatham's old division, groves of locust-trees had been cut down, behind which the first line of Federals received the assault. Gen. Cheatham was commanding the corps, and Gen. John C. Brown the old divis- ion. The division moved to the assault with its left on the Columbia pike. Moving parallel, with its right on the Franklin pike, was Cleburne's division. There had long been a generous rivalry between those two superb commands. Owing to its splen- did achievements at Ringgold, Cleburne's division "held the edge " on the famous Tennesseans. Hence again at Franklin, as on the 22d of July before Atlanta, these two divisions raced for first honors. In splendid style, their officers gal- lantly urging them on, the crack divisions of the Western Army moved through
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shot and shell to the desperate work before them. It was a splendid sight. The entire field was in full view over which the eighteen brigades of Hood's army moved to the assault. From the rifle-pits and the locust zerebas in the front of the main works of the Federal infantry poured a terrific fire, while from the main works and from the heights beyond the river more than a hundred cannon volleyed and thundered upon the advancing host. But there was no halting nor waver- ing, and over the fire-swept plain the assaulting column advanced, closing up the dreadful gaps of death like the "Old Guard" at Waterloo. With a vell and a rush, and at the point of the bayonet, the first line of works was carried, but no halt was made. On and on, with guns at right-shoulder-shift, dashed the heroic lines. Yet a half mile of open ground remains to be crossed. The firing from the main works was now terrific. Not a soldier of that gallant army had ever expe- rienced a fire so dreadful. The hundred cannon, double-shotted, swept the plain, and the roll of twenty thousand muskets was incessant and appalling. But on swept the determined Confederates-never firing a gun, never cheered by the boom of a cannon of their own, never wavering, eyes to the front, " Victory or death" ring- ing in every heart! Officers and men fell like dead leaves when forests are shaken. The glorious Cleburne fell, and the dashing Granbury. Of Cheatham's old division Strahl, Carter, and Gist fell, and Brown and Gordon were wounded. And yet on swept that glorious line of gray. At last, the plain behind them strewn with the dead and wounded until the dead and wounded outnumbered the living, the assaulting column reeled against the strong works behind which the Federal army fought in comparative security, and with the nerve and cool destructiveness that became veterans. The works reached, a ditch must be crossed and an embankment climbed. The Federal fire became now more terrific, all their reserves being brought into action. Then it was that on the right and left the Confederates re- coiled and reeled back across the fatal plain to the rifle-pits and locust zerebas just taken. Of all that assaulting column Cheatham's old division alone held its ground. This division, with every general and field officer killed or wounded, except Col. Hurt, who commanded the Sixth and Ninth, with half its number strewn on the plains, scrambled across the ditch and climbed upon the works, driv- ing the Federals out and taking possession. Having repulsed the Confederates at all other points, the Federals rallied and charged Cheatham's devoted division, confident of annihilating or capturing it. The division, quickly noting its peril, placed the embankment of the works they had taken between them and the Fed- erals, and held their perilous position with matchless heroism and unequaled valor to the end. Assailed in front, subject to a terrific cross-fire from angles in the works to the right and to the left, the old division stood firm and poured a destructive fire into their assailants in front. Alone they stood amid ten thousand, volleyed and thundered at from three sides-stood, and died, and conquered. The Federals gained the opposite side of the earth-works, but could not cross or dis- lodge their enemy. They glared into each others eyes, fought with clubbed guns, but like gladiators, toe to toe, fought and died, but never turned back or wavered. It was a sublime moment. The old division was standing on the sacred soil of its grand old mother, Tennessee. It was making a last heroic effort for home and cause. The eyes of mother, wife, sweetheart, in hearing as it were of the battle's thunder, watched, and waiting wept. Its comrades, after prodigie- of valor, had reeled back from the impossible. It stood alone of all the assaulting host, using the
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