Late that night, Morgan sent Sergeant Quirk and fifteen scouts back to Gallatin to make a reconnaissance and determine the fate of Manley and his men. On reaching the outskirts of the town, Quirk discovered that Federal infantry had departed only a few minutes earlier, their rear guard then being in motion around the blocked tunnels.
Quirk decided to follow them, strike a blow for Lieutenant Manley, and then ride away. As he led his men through a cornfield, he saw the Federals boarding a train that was to take them back toward Nashville. Selecting Private John Donnellan as the loudest-voiced man in the squad, Quirk gave him a quick set of orders, and then disposed his men for attack. “Gano’s Texans on the right flank!” yelled Donnellan. “Morgan’s men on the left flank! Duke’s regiment fall on their rear!” With a great yelling and slashing through the high cornstalks, the fifteen men surged out of the field, brought down two or three startled Federals, captured a few more. Instead of having to turn and gallop away, Quirk’s troopers sat their mounts and watched the panicked engineer steam his train away.
The scouts rode leisurely back to Hartsville with their prisoners, and when Sergeant Quirk reported to Morgan, the Colonel informed the Irishman that he was now a first lieutenant. While the scouts were away a new company of volunteers had come down from Kentucky. None of these men had seen any service, and the new company, M, needed a commanding officer. Ben Drake, Quirk’s constant companion, would be his second lieutenant. Morgan wrote out the commission, citing Quirk’s “gallantry, valor and dash,” and the former candy merchant went off to celebrate in proper style.
Because Hartsville was a much better defensive position than Gallatin, Morgan decided to remain camped there until the Federals made their next move. As it turned out, the regiment stayed for six days.
During this peaceful week, that incorrigible traveling newspaper of the 2nd Kentucky, the Vidette, made its first appearance. Lieutenant Gordon Niles, the New York newspaperman, discovered a plentiful supply of type and a printing press in an abandoned newspaper office, and sent out a call for printers. Four or five men reported, and in a few hours Volume One, Number One of the Vidette was being passed through the camp. Editor Niles’ biggest handicap was shortage of paper, but his resourceful assistants rounded up enough supplies of wrapping paper and wallpaper to keep the publication going. Among the popular articles was an account of the victory at Gallatin and a salute to the women of the South. Basil Duke contributed a new poem which he hoped would become more popular than his “Song of the Raiders.” He called this one “Morgan’s War Song,” and set it to the air of the “Marseillaise”:
Ye sons of the South, take your weapons in hand,
For the foot of the foe hath insulted your land.
Sound! sound the loud alarm!
Arise! arise and arm!
Let the hand of each freeman grasp the sword to maintain
Those rights which, once lost, he can never regain.
Chorus—Gather fast ’neath our flag,
For ’tis God’s own decree
That its folds shall still float
O’er a land that is free.
John Morgan was delighted with the Vidette, and sent off copies to relatives, friends and former friends. And instead of laboriously writing out copies of his general orders and reports for Knoxville and Richmond, he merely passed the originals on to Editor Niles, then used the Vidette for submission to higher authority. Morgan’s were probably the only reports received in Richmond in carefully proofread printed form, and must have unsettled the routines of the clerks in that bureaucrat-ridden city.
Late on the evening of August 19, the easy camp life ended suddenly when a scout reported the presence of three hundred Federal infantrymen in Gallatin. What aroused the boys of the 2nd were rumors that the enemy had arrested every male citizen over twelve years of age in the town—on a charge of collaborating with Morgan’s men in the burning of the railroad tunnels. After months of gallant fighting between soldiers who respected each other, the war was turning brutal. It would become more so in the months ahead.
Marching by night, the 2nd came roaring into Gallatin early on the morning of the twentieth, to discover that the rumor was true—the male citizens were all gone. Gallatin was a town of women and children. A dead man was lying in the street, one of their scouts, and the women told of how he had been kicked and cuffed after being shot. They also whispered darkly of rumors that Lieutenant Manley had been killed after surrendering, and they showed Colonel Morgan a browning stain of blood on the bridge where Manley had died.
“I called my men up to me,” Morgan said afterward, “pointed to the blood and told them whose it was.”
“We take no prisoners today,” one of the men declared angrily.
They moved out south of town, following the track of the Federal infantry, every man determined on revenge. After passing the wrecked tunnels, they came upon a stockade, stormed its defenders fiercely before they could take cover, capturing fifty prisoners. At intervals along the twenty-five miles between Gallatin and Nashville, the Federals had built a chain of these stockades to guard the vital railroad from raiders such as the 2nd Kentucky—heavy upright timbers twelve feet high, surrounded by ditches.
Farther along they overtook the main enemy force, scattering them until their civilian prisoners were freed, pursuing almost to the Cumberland in front of Nashville. At Edgefield Junction, Company A attempted to storm a solidly constructed stockade. The fire of its defenders raked the lines; two officers and three men died, Lieutenants James Smith and Gordon Niles, beloved editor of the Vidette. In their anger, the men of Company A were rallying to make another assault when Basil Duke came up and ordered the attack halted. The odds were insurmountable, Duke saw at once; he regretted not having the “bull pup” howitzers along to smash the heavy timbers.
To avoid an attack in force from the strong Nashville base across the river, Morgan and Duke swung the companies about, and they rode back toward Gallatin, carrying their dead slung over saddles. In the fading light of the day, they overtook a small procession of buggies and wagons which the women of Gallatin had driven out to bring their sons and husbands home. “There was a scene of wild congratulations in town that evening, when they all got in,” Duke wrote. “That night the entire command encamped in the fairgrounds.”
The entire regiment, of course, did not camp in the Gallatin fairgrounds. Detachments of pickets and scouts were out on every road and bypath, alert for a Federal cavalry attack, which was long overdue. Shortly before dawn, Morgan was awakened by a scout bringing warning of long columns of enemy cavalrymen moving toward Gallatin from Hartsville. During the previous afternoon, according to the scout’s informants, the commander of this force had dined in a Hartsville hotel and had boasted publicly that he would “catch Morgan and bring him back in a bandbox.” Further, this general had ordered in advance a meal which was to be cooked and waiting for him the following afternoon after he had whipped the 2nd Kentucky.
John Morgan, better than most commanders, could appreciate such gasconade. No doubt he chuckled as he listened to the scout’s report, then summoned an orderly to waken the bugler for sounding boots and saddles. “Not wishing, on account of the inhabitants,” he wrote in a later report, “to make Gallatin the scene of our contest, I advanced my column, and was greeted on reaching the Hartsville pike by a heavy fire from that direction.”
3
The Union cavalry force marching to do battle with the 2nd Kentucky was no ordinary patrolling regiment. It was a carefully selected body of horsemen, the best that General Buell could collect from his divisions posted around the Nashville perimeter. From the first impact of the news that Morgan’s raiders had blocked the Gallatin tunnels, cutting the Federal supply line, Buell’s headquarters had been in an uproar. And after a day or two, when it was learned that the raiders were so bold as to be still camping in the vicinity, Buell demanded drastic action. It was not enough to court-martial Colonel Boone for surrendering G
allatin without resistance; Morgan’s raiders themselves must be destroyed.
To “catch Morgan and bring him back in a bandbox,” Buell selected a West Pointer, Brigadier General Richard W. Johnson, authorizing him to assemble such cavalry companies as he desired for the expedition. Johnson started from McMinnville and moved through Murfreesboro, taking the best companies from the 2nd Indiana, the 4th and 5th Union Kentucky, and the 7th Pennsylvania. As the column marched north through Lebanon, the 7th Pennsylvania troopers no doubt recalled the morning four months past when they had helped Wolford’s Kentuckians chase Morgan’s men out of the town square.
This was the enemy column which the 2nd Kentucky moved out of Gallatin to do battle with on the morning of August 21.
4
Chance, the incalculable quality of man’s existence, that morning led Sergeant Lawrence Jones of D Company to comb his hair before mounting up and calling for formations. Always meticulous in his dress, the sergeant had adjusted his uniform neatly, then running his fingers through his matted hair, decided to comb it before donning his wide-brimmed hat. The other companies had formed, adjutant’s call had sounded, but Jones was working over his hair with the aid of a pocket mirror which he had suspended from a pin in the bark of an elm tree.
His captain, John Castleman, strode over toward him: “Sergeant Jones, the company is formed, the regiment is moving, the enemy is upon us, we await your readiness. When you report the company will move.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jones, pocketing his mirror, and mounting deliberately. “Company D all present for duty, sir,”
So it was this element of chance which caused D Company to fall in late on the left of the column, out of position instead of being in its proper fourth place in the regimental line of march. And it was this chance of changed location in column that brought the D Company troopers in position to first strike the enemy’s flank, to break the opposing line, and become the heroes of the day.
It came about this way: As soon as Colonel Morgan saw the advance company of the enemy galloping and firing furiously upon his own forward scouts, he ordered Major Wash Morgan, his cousin, to take the first five companies to the left. At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Duke led the remainder of the column to the right, and Company D being out of position in column, went with Duke. In the first collision of opposing forces, the Federals maneuvered hastily off the turnpike, and D Company found itself facing a woodland thick with bluecoats. Dismounting his men, Castleman took them in, fighting Indian fashion from behind trees and brush until the wing of the Federal line broke, leaving the main body on the right isolated in an open field. These latter horsemen quickly dismantled a rail fence, re-formed, and charged toward the turnpike with drawn sabers.
The men in blue made a fine display of horsemanship, sabers glittering in the early morning sunlight as they thundered across the meadow. Companies B, C, E, and F quickly dismounted, horse-holders clattering to the rear, the men on foot dropping on their knees behind a low fence along the road. They held their fire until the blue line was within thirty yards. Then they opened up, rifles blazing in unison. When the smoke cleared the meadow was a tangled mass of thrashing, screaming horses, of dead, dying and wounded men, the survivors recoiling and dashing back toward the gaps in the rail fence.
But before the rout was complete, the Federal officers rallied their men, re-formed them, charging again with sabers up. Company D, meanwhile, swinging back through the woods, struck the enemy flank, enfilading the line. General Johnson, watching from a nearby hill, immediately ordered his battered troops back with a bugle blast.
“At 9:30 o’clock,” Morgan recorded, “I had driven them four miles and was preparing for a final charge, when a flag of truce was brought, proposing an armistice in order to bury their dead.”
The truce flag was a delaying tactic on the part of the Federals. While Morgan was parleying with General Johnson, the Federal cavalry companies began re-forming in the rear. As soon as Morgan informed Johnson that he would “entertain no proposition except unconditional surrender,” the General and his party turned and cantered back to their lines under a fluttering white handkerchief. A moment later the Federal cavalry began withdrawing in orderly fashion.
Morgan ordered immediate pursuit, dividing his regiment into three columns. After a two-mile chase, the Federals pulled up, dismounted, and formed a V-shaped defensive formation at the base of a low hill. Duke and Grenfell came up to them first, with A, B, and E companies, and for once Old St. Lege felt repaid for all the long hours of drilling under the hot sun at Sparta. When Duke gave the command to dismount and form for attack, the boys executed the order with such precision and coolness that Grenfell raised his cap and saluted them with a loud “Bravo!”
After a short but sharp fight of about fifteen minutes, the Federals broke and ran for their horses, most of them escaping into the woods and high corn, heading for the Cumberland River and Nashville. Private Jeff Sterrett caught one of them bounding down the pike on a big sorrel horse, a wild-looking boy with hair on end, mouth wide open, his eyes glazed with confusion. Sterrett grabbed the sorrel’s bridle, and decided to frighten the boy into surrender: “I don’t know whether to kill you now, or to wait until the fight’s all over!”
“For God’s sake,” replied the captive, “don’t kill me at all. I’m a dissipated character, and not prepared to die!”
The haul of prisoners was not large, but it included the boastful General Johnson and several of his officers. When Morgan’s men learned from the Federal captives—most of whom were Pennsylvanians and Indianians—that the 4th and 5th Kentucky troops had been the first to break and run, they felt a little ashamed for these Union representatives of their state. The 4th and 5th certainly were not up to the standard of the rugged boys of Frank Wolford’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry. Later they learned that the Union Kentuckians had not stopped running until they reached Nashville. Lieutenant Colonel Robert R. Stewart of the 2nd Indiana was especially caustic in his report of the behavior of these two regiments. “I had formed a line,” he said, “when they came dashing through in a style of confusion more complete than the flight of a drove of stampeded buffaloes.…There appeared to be a question of rivalry between officers and men for which should outvie in the disgrace of their cowardly scamper.”
In the opinion of most officers and men in the 2nd Kentucky, however, it was General Johnson’s old-fashioned use of mounted saber charges that had brought on the Federals’ defeat and an easy victory for the 2nd. “General Johnson was evidently a fine officer,” Basil Duke commented dryly, “but he seemed not to comprehend ‘the new style of cavalry’ at all.” At this stage in the development of the regiment, some of the junior officers still carried the shiny blades for show, and Morgan occasionally rode with a sword, but as Kelion Peddicord of the scouts noted: “Sabers were useless ornaments in our service. The trooper that attempted to carry one would be forever after a laughing stock for the entire command.”
After Morgan called off pursuit of the luckless foe, the regiment reassembled, and details were assigned to assist the prisoners in burying their dead. The boys also had to bury seven of their own.
In the late afternoon they marched on into Hartsville, Morgan riding beside his prize captive, General Johnson. As they rode along, Morgan must have mentioned the dinner that Johnson had ordered prepared for him that evening in the Hartsville hotel as a celebration for bringing Morgan “back in a bandbox.” At any rate, one of the wounded prisoners of Johnson’s command who was riding near the General wrote, some years after the war: “Johnson pleaded with Morgan to save him the humiliation of meeting the citizens of Hartsville.…Morgan yielded to his entreaties, and took him to a camp two or three miles from Hartsville, at which place he and his men were paroled.” Morgan then went on into Hartsville and ate the luxurious feast which had been prepared for the now-humbled General Johnson.
One of the first tasks undertaken by the former printers in the regiment after their return to H
artsville was publication of a special edition of the Vidette. Major Robert A. Alston, the South Carolinian who had recently joined Morgan’s staff as adjutant, took over the duties of the late Gordon Niles as editor, with occasional assistance from Texan R.M. Gano. Alston’s first issue featured a victory proclamation which Morgan read before the assembled regiment on August 22:
Soldiers: Your gallant bearing during the last two days will not only be inscribed in the history of the country and the annals of this war, but is engraven deeply in my heart. Your zeal and devotion…your heroism during the two hard fights of yesterday, have placed you high on the list of those patriots who are now in arms for our Southern rights.…All communications cut off between Gallatin and Nashville, a body of three hundred infantry totally cut up or taken prisoners, the liberation of those kind friends arrested by our revengeful foes…would have been laurels sufficient for your brows; but, soldiers, the utter annihilation of General Johnson’s brigade…raises your reputation as soldiers and strikes fear into the craven hearts of your enemies. Officers and men, your conduct makes me proud to command you. Fight always as you fought yesterday and you are invincible.
Another Vidette account described the unexpected arrival on the twenty-second of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest with his cavalry division. The Confederates’ efficient intelligence system in central Tennessee had warned Chattanooga headquarters of Johnson’s combined forces moving to trap the 2nd Kentucky, and Forrest had been dispatched to aid Morgan. Forrest was regretful that he had arrived too late to join in the victory, but the commanders celebrated in high style, this being their first leisurely meeting since they had joined in the policing of Nashville during the winter.