“We were pleased to see General Forrest,” the Vidette commented. “He looks to be in the enjoyment of excellent health, and happy as you could expect so noble a patriot, enjoying the good news that crowds upon us from every quarter. I thought as I looked upon the manly forms of Forrest and Morgan that nothing could excel that picture except the groups, everywhere to be seen, of our lovely countrywomen. They excel all the universe contains.…Oh what can equal the women of the South? They are the noblest works of God. I must leave this dull sanctum to look once more upon them.”
5
Some of the gaiety prevalent in the regiment during its short stay in Hartsville was diminished by two somber incidents involving deserters turned over to the 2nd for punishment. The first deserter, a native of Gallatin scarcely twenty years old, had been taken while bearing arms for the Union. The sentence was inevitable: to be shot to death.
The boys of the 2nd had no taste for this side of war; they understood its necessity, but were revolted at having to carry out the action. Twelve men were selected for a firing squad, six with loaded rifles, six with unloaded, so that none would know if he were the executioner or not. Lieutenant Sam Morgan, the colonel’s cousin, was in command of the squad, and he directed the execution with obvious reluctance. A native of Tennessee, himself, young Morgan addressed the prisoner briefly: “Die like a Tennessean!” then barked out the fatal commands: “Ready! Aim! Fire!”
The second incident concerned a deserter who had not joined the enemy, being, as Basil Duke observed, “too cowardly to fight on either side.” This man was sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, a method of punishment that seemed even more revolting to the men of the 2nd than death by firing squad. The day before sentence was to be executed, a deputation of ten men, one from each company, called on Duke for a conference.
“Colonel Duke,” said the spokesman, “we are instructed by our comrades to say that no man in the regiment will consent to flog this man. We feel no sympathy for the scoundrel, but we think such an act would be degrading to ourselves. It isn’t on his account we refuse, but on our own. We never expected to disobey any order you might give us, and we very reluctantly tell you that we will disobey this one if given. If you see fit to punish any of us for refusing, well and good; we’ll make no complaint. But none of us will flog that hound, mean as he is.”
Duke was disconcerted by this turn of events, but he understood the feelings of his men. “Very well, gentlemen,” he replied firmly, “I appreciate your frankness. As for punishing any one of you for disobedience, I only say that no order has yet been disobeyed. Go back and tell your comrades that I’ve received their message.”
For some hours the young Lieutenant Colonel pondered the problem, wondering how it might be solved. He had an order to carry out, but how could it be done if no one in the regiment would consent to be the executioner? Unexpectedly the solution came in the person of a second lieutenant, recently elected to that rank by the men of Captain Desha’s company. The Lieutenant announced that he had learned of the resolution taken by the enlisted men of the regiment, and that he was willing to help Duke “out of a difficulty” by flogging the prisoner himself.
Duke could scarcely restrain his indignation. “Don’t you understand, Lieutenant, that the private soldiers have expressed a disinclination to perform such service because they regard it as degrading? Will you, an officer whom I cannot order to do such a thing, volunteer for duty so abhorrent?”
The Lieutenant assured him that he was doing it as a matter of duty, and Duke, although he could barely contain his anger, finally decided to grant permission.
Next day at the appointed hour the prisoner was brought forth stripped to the waist, and was bound to a stake in front of the regiment which was drawn up on parade to witness the flogging. The Lieutenant than made his appearance, walking in a pompous strut and flourishing a long thick leather strap. At a signal from Captain Desha, Officer of the Day, the flogging began, the Lieutenant applying his blows with apparent relish, the victim screaming and circling the stake in his agony. After the thirty-ninth lash had been delivered, the Lieutenant raised his arm with the evident intention of striking again. A roar of anger arose almost in unison from the regiment, and Captain Desha spurred his horse forward, threatening to shoot the Lieutenant if he struck again.
That afternoon Duke summoned the Lieutenant to his headquarters. The man came swaggering in, obviously expecting that his lieutenant colonel intended to thank him for the service he had rendered. Instead Duke curtly informed the man that he was no longer an officer of the 2nd Kentucky. Furthermore he was not to remain with the regiment in any capacity.
The Lieutenant was astonished, first expressing disbelief, then accusing Duke of injustice, of having no right to dismiss him so summarily. Duke calmly admitted that his accuser was probably correct, but insisted that he had meant what he said. He was resolved, he explained, to protect the men of his command from the humiliation of serving under such an officer. “I believe,” added the soft-voiced Lieutenant Colonel, “that if I preferred charges against you for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, a court-martial would convict you, and you would be regularly dismissed from the service. As it is, I simply tell you that you cannot serve as an officer in this regiment. You can go where you please.”
The man saw that Duke was adamant. Some time that night he left the Hartsville camp—and the boys of the 2nd Kentucky never saw him again.
7
Dark and Bloody Ground
I
FROM HARTSVILLE, TENNESSEE, LATE in August, 1862, John Morgan wrote to a clothing manufacturer in Alabama, ordering one thousand new uniforms. “My men are nearly out of clothes. Have them made full size and very strong. Our service is very hard upon clothes.” Although he gave no address for delivery, he was quite hopeful of accepting these uniforms somewhere in Kentucky.
On August 28, Morgan received support for these hopes in the form of a message from Kirby Smith ordering the 2nd Kentucky in motion “to meet him in Lexington about September 2.” Smith’s advance infantry units were already into the passes of the Cumberland Mountains, heading for Lexington. And southward around Chattanooga, Bragg was starting his army across the Tennessee River with Louisville as the goal.
Marching out of Hartsville the morning of August 29, the nine hundred troopers of the 2nd were in their most ebullient spirits—cheering, laughing, joking, singing. They said their farewells to good friends in Hartsville with special meaning. They were sure that if they came back again, they would come as civilians; the war would be ended. This time they were going home to Kentucky with the intention of staying there.
As they rode northeastward, some of them even felt a sense of lingering regret at leaving this lovely Tennessee countryside of green pastures and yellow fields ripening with grain, of blue hills, shady forests, and cool clear watercourses. They knew they would forever remember the lazy summer bivouacs, the excitement of chase and combat, the moonlit rides, the lovely girls of Gallatin and Hartsville. On this particular August day the war they had endured for almost a year bore a transitory illusion of romance, peopled by legendary Maid Marians, Sheriffs of Nottingham, and such chivalric heroes as they knew from reading the Waverley Novels.
Before nightfall they crossed into Kentucky at Red Sulphur Springs, and camped that night a few miles beyond Scottsville. Around cooking fires they sang Basil Duke’s new war song, and some variations of “The Girl I left Behind Me”:
“If ever I get through this war
And Lincoln’s chains don’t bind me,
I’ll make my way to Kentuckee
To the girl I left behind me.”
With all the rumors and talk of the “big” invasion and a feeling of portentous events in the air, sleep did not come easily that first night on Kentucky soil.
By daybreak Morgan had them moving again, and at ten o’clock they were entering Glasgow. For the benefit of the hometown boys of C Company, the regime
nt rested there through the noon hours, then marched up toward the familiar woods along Green River.
By noon of the thirty-first they were in Columbia. As yet they had seen not one blue-coated soldier, but Morgan was wary, and he ordered the regiment into camp. There were two reasons for delaying the march at Columbia; first, the Colonel’s brother, Charlton, was somewhere in the rear, bringing up the two “bull pup” howitzers from Knoxville where they had been sent for repairs; and second, information was needed from scouting parties sent out along the roads toward Lexington.
Thirty-six hours later, Charlton Morgan arrived with the howitzers, and most of the scouts had returned with reports that routes toward Lexington were all clear except for occasional annoying bushwhackers. The night of September 2, when the regiment marched into Houstonville, Confederate sympathizers there were celebrating news of Kirby Smith’s great victory over the Federals a few miles south of Lexington.
The boys of the 2nd were elated to hear of the victory, but disappointed with the realization that General Smith’s columns would likely arrive in Lexington before they did. There was little sleep among the Lexington contingent that night, and every man of them was saddled and ready to ride at the first sign of dawn.
By late morning they were in Danville, and all afternoon they rode hard, excitement mounting, everyone wondering where the enemy could be. Kentucky seemed swept clean of Federals. It was dusk when they reached Nicholasville, with Lexington only twelve miles to the north, and the Bluegrass boys were eager to march on up the pike. But Morgan ordered a halt, passing the word to the men to wash up, brush the dust from their uniforms, and curry horses. He wanted to enter Lexington by daylight, on parade.
At ten o’clock the morning of September 4, John Morgan, in full dress uniform of a Confederate colonel, rode proudly into Lexington at the head of his regiment. Here the 2nd Kentucky had begun its career, almost a year ago on an early autumn evening with a handful of men on two hay wagons rumbling unnoticed out of town along Main Street. Along this same street the full regiment marched now, a high moment for the boys of the Bluegrass, with bands playing, Confederate flags fluttering from the buildings, and sidewalks crowded with old friends cheering them wildly as they marched on down Main to Cheapside, the square, where they halted and dismounted.
“The wildest joy ruled the hour,” said one observer. “The bells of the city pealed forth their joyous welcome, whilst the waving of thousands of white handkerchiefs and tiny Confederate flags attested the gladness and joy of every heart. Such a scene—I shall never look upon its like again!” At every street corner baskets of provisions and buckets of water had been placed for the troopers’ refreshment; gifts of every kind were pressed upon them.
“John Morgan could scarcely get to his home, the people almost carried him,” Mattie Wheeler of Winchester wrote in her diary. “I went to Lexington last Sunday with Lee [her brother] and spent the day. Lee went on business, he was raising a company to go in John Morgan’s brigade. I dislike for Lee to go, very much, but I know there is no use to say anything, his mind has been made up for some time. Every young man in the State is going that are not Union, and they [the Unions] are very scarce.”
As Miss Wheeler predicted, recruiting was active around the 2nd’s headquarters, and Major Robert Alston wasted no time taking over a printing office to publish broadsides appealing for more men to join up. “Arouse Kentuckians!” one began in bold type, over Morgan’s name. “I have kept my promise.…Young men of Kentucky flock to my standard!”
Understandably they all wanted to join the cavalry, all wanted to go with Morgan’s 2nd Kentucky. Although Kirby Smith had won the race into Lexington, the General obtained barely enough recruits for his infantry to fill up a single company. Courtland Prentice, son of Morgan’s bitter enemy, editor George Prentice of Louisville, came in to volunteer for the Confederacy. Young Prentice was immediately commissioned a lieutenant in the 2nd Kentucky. Among other unexpected arrivals was one of Tom Quirk’s former scouts, Tom Berry, who had been severely wounded at the Cynthiana bridge in July. Captured and imprisoned, Berry had escaped and made his way back to Kentucky. He arrived in Lexington with several recruits, but as the 2nd was at full strength, Berry took his followers into a new regiment being formed around R. M. Gano’s Texans.
Other volunteers were coming in so rapidly that Morgan gave Captain William Breckinridge permission to withdraw Company I from the 2nd and begin the organization of a third regiment.
It was John Morgan’s day, and he enjoyed every moment of it. He established headquarters at Hopemont, the Morgan family mansion at the corner of Mill and Second streets. Friends pointed out to him where Federal sentinels had lurked in the Hopemont shrubbery night after night in the belief that the cavalry leader would be bold enough sooner or later to visit his mother. A delegation of Bluegrass ladies called to make him a present of regimental colors sewed by their own hands. Some of his male admirers gave him a set of silver spurs. His old friend, Keene Richards, a Bluegrass breeder, brought him a beautiful charger, a Thoroughbred gelding named Glencoe. (A year later Morgan would be riding Glencoe on a fateful march across Ohio.)
“Have spent the day in Lexington,” one of Kirby Smith’s infantrymen recorded, “wandering about the beautiful streets and feasting my eyes on the pretty rosy-cheeked girls. The great chieftain, John Alorgan…is a splendid type of the genus homo, and seems to be a perfect idol with the people. They gather around him in groups and listen with wondering admiration to the recital of his daring adventures. Recruiting is going on rapidly, and Kentucky is enlisted in the cause for freedom.”
It was a glorious, buoyant week, and there was even some wild talk of riding on to Chicago and marching down the streets of that city. But wiser heads knew that Louisville must be taken first, and acting with that end in mind, Kirby Smith ordered Morgan to send a small raiding force against a Federal stockade guarding the Salt River bridge on the L.&N. Railroad. Captain John B. Hutchinson was assigned the mission, and having had experience with stockades before, he took the howitzers along with four companies of the 2nd.
By the time this expedition returned to Lexington, after successfully burning the long bridge and capturing its defenders, Kirby Smith was ready to threaten Cincinnati—a move designed to keep Federal forces occupied there while Bragg was coming up toward Louisville. To screen his infantry units, Smith needed cavalry, and again the 2nd Regiment drew the assignment. Captain Hutchinson, with six companies, marched up within five miles of Covington, creating a cold shock of fear in Cincinnati which lay just across the Ohio River.
A few days later, Basil Duke followed with the other companies of the regiment. For the first time the 2nd was going into a combat area without Morgan. General Smith had ordered the Colonel into eastern Kentucky with Gano’s and Breckinridge’s new regiments to intercept the Federal commander, General George W. Morgan.
On his way to the Covington lines, Duke met Captain Hutchinson near the little town of Walton. A heavy Union force was advancing out of Cincinnati, and for the next two or three days the regiment zigzagged back and forth across the “camel’s hump” salient of northern Kentucky, avoiding contact with the enemy, successfully deceiving him as to the actual Confederate strength in the area.
While swinging back toward Walton early one morning, an advance party of Company A suddenly overran an infantry patrol. Lieutenant Greenberry Roberts, in command, ordered the Federals to surrender, and sent Sergeant Will Hays ahead with six men to pick up stragglers. Sergeant Hays and his men galloped right into the midst of an entire company, sixty-nine Ohioans in brand-new blues, obviously raw recruits. Dressed in dusty blue jeans, Hays pretended to be a Union cavalryman, but the ruse failed. The Federal lieutenant ordered his men to cock their rifles. Hays instantly leveled his own rifle at the head of the lieutenant, and the six men with Hays grouped around their sergeant, threatening to shoot any man who should raise a rifle against him.
“I thought it the finest sight I had eve
r seen,” said Duke who arrived about this time at the head of Company A. The Federals surrendered immediately, and were sent back to the rear of the column to be paroled.
That evening while in bivouac outside Falmouth, the regiment first heard the news of Lee’s brilliant victory over McClellan at Antietam Creek in Maryland. The star of the Confederacy was rising, the battle lines moving northward now, and most of the boys of the 2nd Kentucky were even more confident the war would end before the year was out.
Basil Duke shared their hopes. With Lee in Maryland, the time had come for the western armies to strike at Ohio. Shortly before Morgan had been ordered off to eastern Kentucky, he and Duke had discussed the possibility of a raid across the Ohio River, and they took their plan to Kirby Smith. Smith in turn had queried Bragg, but the latter was opposed to a crossing in force, advising only a feint by a small raiding party to draw off reinforcements from Buell’s army.
Now, late in September, Duke pondered the possibility of a crossing by the entire 2nd Regiment. If the Federal commanders around Cincinnati could be panicked by a few cavalry companies appearing outside Covington, what would they do if faced by an entire regiment on their side of the river?
With this unanswered question in mind, he sent John Castleman and Company D to scout possible fords along the Ohio. Castleman and his men came up to the river near Foster’s Landing, a point where the westward rolling stream turns north toward Cincinnati. Scouting toward Augusta, Castleman found the river running low in the late summer season. A mile or so below Augusta he discovered a series of sand shoals lying almost the width of the river, an excellent place for a cavalry crossing.