With these obvious advantages, the 2nd Kentucky boys had at least a year’s start in the school of the trooper. They had learned at Shiloh that sabers were not of much use in their style of fighting, that tents were excess baggage for cavalrymen, that a blanket and a waterproof were sufficient sleeping equipment, two men sharing their pairs. “One oilcloth went next to the ground; the two laid on this, covering themselves with two blankets, protected from the rain with the second oilcloth on top, and slept very comfortably through rain, snow, or hail, as it might be.”
They had learned that a trooper consisted of one man, one hat, one jacket, one shirt, one pair of pants, one pair of drawers, one pair of socks, one pair of boots (preferably captured Federal jackboots tied with a stout leather string above the knee). As Private Mosgrove declared, the ideal was “a good horse, a Mexican saddle, a pair of big spurs with bells on them, a light long-range gun, a brace of Colt’s revolvers, a good blanket, some form of oil cloth, and a canteen of brandy sweetened with honey. When he had these things, or some of them, he was a merry fellow, ready to dash into battle, singing ‘I’m glad to be in this army.’ ”
This final maturation of the veterans of the 2nd Kentucky was another important result of that thousand-mile raid in July, 1862, a fulfillment which must have been so obvious to John Morgan that he saw no reason to mention it in his official report.
6
The Spartan Life
I
THE CLASSICAL SCHOLARS, of whom there were a number in the 2nd Kentucky, sometimes referred to the regiment’s extended stay at Sparta, Tennessee, in August, 1862, as “the Spartan life.” For one thing the summer crops were not in; consequently there was a shortage of rations for men, and little grain to bring horses back into condition. But even worse—in the opinion of the alligator horses—than the shortage of provender was the rigid discipline suddenly imposed upon them by Adjutant St. Léger Grenfell with the full support of the acting commander, Lieutenant Colonel Basil Duke.
Duke and Grenfell had two reasons for requiring strict discipline. One was to prevent a second disastrous surprise such as had occurred at Lebanon; the other was to stop the men from wandering off to the numerous whisky stills in the neighborhood and returning to camp in no condition for emergencies. The boys referred to these expeditions as “going on a lark,” and the only way Grenfell could stop them was to double and redouble the guards. At one time he had half the regiment posted on guard duty, but as details rotated, the Englishman soon found “some peculiar swaps” being made by the guardsmen.
Finally, with Duke’s permission, he resolved to keep them all so busy that none could find the time or energy for “going on larks.” Day after day, from dawn until after sunset, the 2nd Regiment provided Sparta with a continuous succession of colorful guard mountings, foot drills, mounted drills, and company and regimental dress parades. Naturally, the boys groused about all this interference with their freedom, but they were fond of Old St. Lege, and to a man they respected Basil Duke. Duke frankly admitted that his men never had much discipline and would obey only those whom they admired and who could win their confidence. They would cheerfully submit to the severest punishment, he said, provided it was not degrading in nature, but would not endure harsh and insulting language or anything that was humiliating.
To alleviate the shortage of bread, and also to keep a few men busy, Duke decided to order a brick bake oven constructed. After a detail had collected some loose bricks from around Sparta, he sent out a call for bricklayers. One of the volunteers was Private Tom Boss of C Company, a fierce-looking, lanky Kentuckian, six and a half feet tall, with bristly black hair. As Boss had been a mason, Duke put him in charge of the construction, and the job was completed satisfactorily within two days.
When the bake-oven detail reported that the job was completed, Duke asked Tom Boss what sort of special reward the boys would like to have for their excellent work. “Three days’ furlough,” replied Boss instantly, “to go where we please and not be interfered with by that damned provost guard.” Although Duke knew where they would most likely go, he granted the furloughs and notified Grenfell to warn his patrols to look the other way if they found Tom Boss and his friends celebrating around one of the nearby whisky stills.
There were other light moments during the period of the Spartan life. After the men learned that “larking” was not to be tolerated, they began devising camp sports of their own, such as footraces. Lightning Ellsworth won a race or two, than began boasting that he could outrun anybody in the 2nd Kentucky. Wiry little Jeff Sterrett of B Company listened to the telegrapher’s bragging for a day or two, then invited him to participate in a special race which he was promoting. Ellsworth accepted, but when the contestants showed up, Sterrett announced that each runner was to carry a jockey. Protesting that he had never bargained for such a race, Ellsworth attempted to beg off. Kentucky races, Sterrett insisted, always have jockeys, and he was so persuasive that Ellsworth finally agreed to participate.
“The two men of least weight in the regiment were indicated as riders,” Duke afterward recalled, “and Jeff Sterrett was selected to ride Ellsworth. Sterrett surreptitiously buckled on a pair of Texas spurs, with long and exceedingly keen rowels, and when the signal to start was given plunged them into his mount. Ellsworth was naturally disgusted at such treatment, and for a while sulked and refused to go. But as Sterrett continued to ply the spurs, he thought better of the matter and stretched away with an amazing burst of speed. He not only overtook and passed his antagonist and beat him out many lengths, but ran forty yards beyond the goal before he could be pulled up.”
During this summer interlude, the regiment had the pleasure of welcoming back several of its veterans who had been captured during the Lebanon Races. For a time there had been some apprehension that these prisoners might be dealt with severely. No less a personage than Andrew Johnson, then serving as Union military governor of Tennessee, strongly objected to their being exchanged. “Morgan and his marauding gang should not be admitted within the rules of civilized warfare,” declared Johnson, “and that portion of his forces taken at Lebanon should not be held as prisoners of war. I hope you will call the attention of Secretary Stanton to the fact of their being a mere band of freebooters.”
The machinery of prisoner exchange, however, had been well developed by this time on both sides, and each knew that discrimination against one set of prisoners would lead to discrimination from the other side, bringing about a rapid breakdown of the intricate system. Agreement had been made to exchange man for man and officer for officer within ten days after capture, the entire arrangement bearing a remarkable similarity to banking practices, everything being based on a “credit” system whereby records of surplus prisoners were kept on file and balanced against later reports of men captured or exchanged.
To take care of temporary surpluses of men, who were sworn not to take up arms again until notified of a “paper” exchange, the Confederates established a parolee camp for their men near Marietta, Georgia, and the Federals operated a similar one for Union soldiers at Camp Chase, Ohio. This system was devised to halt the practice of parolees going home to await notification and thus becoming too accustomed to the ease of civilian life.
During 1862, the Confederates always had more prisoner “credits” than the Federals, capturing and paroling more men than Camp Chase could hold. General Don Carlos Buell became so annoyed by the excessive number of parolees in his command that he issued a general order forbidding officers and men to give their paroles without his sanction, an order virtually impossible to enforce, of course. General Jerry Boyle, the Union commander in Kentucky, even went so far as to suggest that some of his men were “putting themselves in the way of being taken,” and he recommended that parolees be branded by having one half of their heads shaved.
2
In the summer of 1862, after a long series of reverses, the fortunes of the Confederate Army in the West appeared to be improving. Federal forces had be
en brought to a halt in northern Mississippi, and Braxton Bragg, who had replaced the ailing Beauregard as commander in the West, was left free to rebuild the main Confederate Army around Chattanooga. After General Halleck’s departure for Washington to become Lincoln’s general-in-chief, the Federal armies which had been combined at Shiloh were divided again, Grant taking command in Mississippi, Buell in Tennessee.
The new Confederate commander in the West, General Bragg, was a West Pointer of wide military experience, a saturnine, humorless, unimaginative man, who sometimes bore personal grudges, and, as his subordinates were soon to discover, possessed a fatal tendency to vacillate in the face of emergencies. His viewpoint on the use of cavalry was decidedly conservative, and his relations with the 2nd Kentucky and other raiding regiments serving under the command of John Morgan would seldom run smoothly.
On July 31, Kirby Smith came down to Chattanooga from Knoxville to confer with Bragg concerning a late summer campaign against Buell’s army. Bragg’s original plan was to drive for Nashville, wrest that key city from Buell, and thus force Grant to leave Mississippi. Kirby Smith, however, had a handful of fresh reports in his pocket from John Morgan, giving full and glowing details of the successful raid into Kentucky. Bragg evidently was impressed by these reports, and when Smith pointed out that a massive invasion of Kentucky might have vast political as well as military effects, even Bragg’s slow imagination was kindled. Bragg agreed to combine with Kirby Smith in a two-pronged invasion of Kentucky to begin late in August. While Smith was moving north through Cumberland Gap, Bragg would make a feint toward Nashville, then swing around the city and race for Louisville.
It was an audacious plan, and John Morgan was delighted when Smith informed him of the role the 2nd Kentucky was to play in the invasion. On Sunday, August 10, Morgan returned to Sparta from Kirby Smith’s Knoxville headquarters with marching orders for the 2nd. The regiment was to move above Nashville and raid the L.&N. Railroad at Gallatin, cutting off Buell’s supplies.
Long before dawn of Monday the columns were in motion. They crossed the Cumberland River near Carthage, reaching Dixon Springs late in the afternoon. Somewhere along the way they met by prearrangement a company of thirty men, fresh recruits out of Kentucky. These recruits were led by Captain Joseph Desha, a veteran of infantry fighting in Virginia. In a brief ceremony, Morgan admitted Desha and his men into the 2nd as Company L.
It was nearly midnight when they rode into Hartsville, passing through the town without halting, and day was breaking when they came up to the outskirts of Gallatin and turned off the pike to avoid enemy pickets.
Morgan had planned the capture of Gallatin with great care, having sent a civilian spy, Jim Childress, ahead of the regiment some days before. Childress won the confidence of the Federal commander, Colonel William P. Boone, by a simple ruse. Dashing into Boone’s headquarters, breathless and hatless, Childress told the Colonel that he had just escaped the clutches of Rebel conscript officers and begged for protection. Boone not only granted protection to the spy, he also gave him a new hat and complete freedom of movement around the Federal camp. After completing his observations, Childress slipped out through the picket lines and reported to Morgan what he had learned.
And so Morgan knew, as he led the 2nd up to Gallatin early on the morning of August 12, that the town was garrisoned by about 375 men of the 28th Kentucky Union Infantry under command of Colonel Boone. He knew that the off-duty men, probably 150 or so, would be sleeping in the camp at the fairgrounds just west of Gallatin. The others would be on picket duty along roads leading into town, or scattered along the railroad guarding bridges, water tanks, and the twin railroad tunnels (which Morgan had visited some months earlier). Morgan was also aware, from Childress’ report, that Colonel Boone was in the habit of sleeping with his wife in a Gallatin hotel, usually without posted guards nearer than the courthouse. He hoped to capture Boone, and force a surrender of the garrison without firing a shot.
Leaving the regiment concealed in woods adjoining the town, Morgan and Captain Desha with a small raiding party slipped through a cornfield into the nearest street. In the dawnlight, neatly painted white houses contrasted against thick groves of evergreens. Lawns and shrubs were heavy with dew. At the courthouse they found two pickets asleep and captured them almost without a sound, then moved along in the shadows of buildings to the hotel. Desha volunteered to take a dozen men and go inside to capture Colonel Boone.
When Desha knocked on Boone’s door, the Federal commander was already awake and dressed in preparation for going out to his camp to take morning reports. Upon opening the door, Boone was amazed to find himself confronted by a dozen strange soldiers with cocked revolvers, their gray jeans wet with dew and covered with pollen grains from corn. Desha quietly demanded that he surrender. “By what authority?” Boone asked. Desha informed Boone that Morgan’s 2nd Cavalry had captured the town, and that bloodshed could be avoided only if the Colonel would surrender himself and his camp.
After some deliberation, Boone agreed to surrender himself but not the camp. One or two of the men with Desha threatened to shoot Boone if he did not surrender his men, but Desha took him to Morgan for a decision. As the party left the hotel, the streets were beginning to fill with advance companies of the 2nd, and the town of Gallatin was suddenly wide awake. With grave courtesy Morgan greeted his fellow Kentuckian, Boone, then ordered him to mount up and together they began riding out toward the fairgrounds camp. Colonel Boone, however, held to his first position; he would not surrender his men.
As the 2nd moved rapidly toward the fairgrounds, Morgan sent companies to right and left through woods and fields to surround the Federal camp. About three hundred yards from the grounds, the column halted and Morgan summoned his officers for a conference.
After considerable discussion, Colonel Boone agreed to write a note to the captain on duty in the camp, informing him that he was surrounded by superior forces. Duke and Grenfell then volunteered to take the message forward under a flag of truce.
Thus the garrison at Gallatin surrendered without a shot being fired, and while the prisoners—about two hundred men—were being marched into town to be paroled, detachments of the 2nd Kentucky raced up and down the railroad capturing small details guarding bridges and tunnels.
Meanwhile, Lightning Ellsworth had also won a bloodless victory at the Gallatin telegraph office. Finding the office unlocked, he had climbed a stairway, entered the operator’s sleeping quarters, and awakened him with the stern command: “Surrender in the name of John Morgan.”
“Certainly,” replied the operator, J. N. Brooks, when he saw a pair of huge navy pistols pointed directly at him.
“Dress,” said Ellsworth.
When they went downstairs to the office, Ellsworth ordered Brooks to connect his instrument and find out where the trains were. Brooks followed orders, Ellsworth’s keen ear and memory recording the operator’s style. When Brooks began deliberately tapping the key in an awkward manner to arouse the Nashville operator’s suspicions, Ellsworth ordered him to stop, and placed him under guard.
With his usual flair for confusing the enemy, Ellsworth sent off a message to the Federal Commander at Bowling Green, informing him that John Morgan was raiding in that direction with four thousand men, signing the communication with Colonel Boone’s name. Then learning that a freight train was moving down from the north, he assumed the role of the Nashville train dispatcher, and brought it in to a siding. In a matter of minutes the boys of the 2nd swarmed all over the freight train, taking what supplies they could use, handing out some to the citizens of Gallatin, and burning the remainder.
But the prize that Ellsworth wanted most, a passenger train from Nashville, escaped because of the alertness of the Nashville operator. The operator held the train, then tapped out a message to Gallatin: “If it’s Ellsworth at key, I would like you to protect Brooks.” Always respectful of a clever adversary, Ellsworth readily admitted his identity and promised to parole Broo
ks without harm.
As soon as Morgan learned that the expected passenger train from Nashville would not be coming—but that Federal forces probably would be—he ordered the immediate destruction of the twin railroad tunnels between Gallatin and Nashville. According to Captain John Castleman, whose company participated in the burning of the interior framework, they made certain the south tunnel would be blocked by running the captured freight locomotive inside at high speed, wrecking it upon a heap of cribbed ties. After the tunnel framework burned, slate rock around it collapsed, and as the rock contained coal it continued to burn for several days.*
Leaving the tunnels, the raiders turned to the bridges, burning all of them in the vicinity. Here and there they ripped up rails, laid them across heaps of crossties, and rode on, leaving the heat to do its work of warping the metal.
When the regiment reassembled in Gallatin, darkness was falling. As there was no doubt in Morgan’s mind that every Federal unit in the area was alerted and in motion toward Gallatin, he decided to withdraw. Leaving Lieutenant Manley and a few men behind to burn the fairgrounds amphitheater where Colonel Boone’s regiment had been quartered, he ordered a night march over the fifteen miles back east to Hartsville.
Having missed two nights’ sleep in succession, the boys were permitted to drowse late in their Hartsville camp the morning of the thirteenth. During the day their friends in the community brought in an abundant supply of hams, turkeys and chickens, roasted and ready for eating. The pleasant, lazy August day was spoiled, however, by a report from Gallatin. A Federal force, it was said, had entered the town before dawn, killing Lieutenant Manley and wounding or capturing most of his detail.