The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (12 page)

On Wednesday, February 12, Grant first appeared in their front but showed no great anxiety to attack. He awaited his gunboats. That night Hanson put four of his companies in their intrenchments, expecting an attack the next day, and in the morning sent the remaining six in advance to the rifle pits. Few slept the night of February 12. Indeed, for Hanson at least there was almost no sleep at any time. “I had seen some hard times as a soldier in the Mexican War,” he wrote a month later, “but the hardest time I have ever experienced was during the siege of Donaldson.” Most of the time his men had no tents, and the rest of their stay they had no blankets. “From the exposed position we had we were unable to sleep for several nights.” Hanson slept not at all, and when he did lie down it was only to awake with both ears frostbitten.
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The morning of February 13 Grant finally opened fire. Just past light the federal artillery began, and shortly afterward the Kentuckians saw a line of bluecoated soldiers moving toward them through the woods in their front. They advanced in unbroken ranks to within a hundred yards of Hanson’s rifle pits before the Confederates fired. Undeterred, the Federals came another forty yards until Hanson’s fire disrupted their line and forced them back. Twice more this day they charged, and twice were repulsed.

It unsettled the “Orphans.” For almost all of them these were the first hostile shots ever fired their way, an uncomfortable feeling. The men in reserve in the trenches, unable to fire at the enemy with six companies of their comrades out front in the pits, sat and bore the enemy bullets in silence. They dodged and ducked at every buzzing missile they heard, but Hanson walked among them calmly and told them not to bother. By the time a bullet was heard, he said, it was already past. Then one came dangerously close to “Bench-leg” and, as it whistled past, he involuntarily ducked his head, much to the delight of the men. With his usual good humor, he finally relented. “Boys, you may dodge a little if they come too close.”

The dodge worked only for a few. Those who did not duck in time were hit, and here for the first time death found the Orphans in a real battle. At the first enemy volley, Sergeant Neil Hendricks of Company B took a bullet in the chest. He recovered, but H. B. Nelson of Company G did not. A federal bullet must have hit an artery for, even
though his captain tried to stanch the flow with a handkerchief, Nelson bled to death in a few minutes. That night, the fighting done, several of his friends stole back to Dover and found boards to make a rude coffin. They buried Private Nelson in the Tennessee sod, a long way from home, the first of hundreds to die as Orphans.
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Reinforcements arrived for Hanson that night, and again the following day. Now the enemy boats started their bombardment, which would be incessant for almost two days. This alone, despite the cold, prevented sleep for the already weary Kentuckians. They stood under arms all day, expecting an attack that did not come, though constant sharpshooting kept them alert. At about 3
A.M.
, Saturday, February 15, Buckner appeared at Hanson’s bivouack and ordered his men to follow him to Graves’s position, where they were to act as a reserve. Pillow would attack in the morning and the Orphans might be needed.

Graves opened the attack by firing on a federal battery, which coolly replied for some time, Buckner all the while pacing calmly back and forth in front of Hanson’s men. At 9
A.M.
Buckner sent two regiments forward to take the enemy battery. They made a valiant attempt, but fell back and Buckner, after replacing them in their intrenchments, went to Hanson. “The Second Kentucky will have to do that work!” he shouted. At the same moment a mounted man appeared in rear of the regiment, “purporting to be an officer,” said Hanson. Some thought it was Graves himself. Whoever it was, he cried out, “Where is the Second Kentucky? Come to the aid of my battery.” The captains of Companies B and G on Hanson’s left took this as an order and moved out, past Graves’s position, and forward against the battery that was giving him so much trouble. They got within fifty yards of the Federals, and there traded bullets for almost fifteen minutes. Then they started falling back, as the enemy pressed forward.

Hanson was in a quandary. He sent for Buckner, but he could not be found. “There was no time for delay,” he decided. “I examined the state of the contest.” He saw cavalry led by Colonel Nathan B. Forrest make two unsuccessful charges on his left. “My men were eager for the fight,” he believed. Now “Bench-leg” decided not to await authority, but to advance on his own responsibility, believing he could stop the enemy advance and drive them back. At almost this same instant he received a request from Forrest to assist in another attempt to take the federal battery.

Hanson marched his regiment forward, across their line of defenses,
and down the slope to a ravine where Forrest awaited. Here his two detached companies rejoined him, and here Hanson told the men, “Hold your fire until at close quarters!” He would depend upon the bayonet if possible. Ahead of them lay 200 yards of open ground to cross before they reached the wood in which the enemy battery and its infantry supports sheltered. Forrest would charge the battery, Hanson the infantry.

Steady, as if on parade, the Kentuckians moved forward. They took casualties. Lieutenant William Hill of Company F saw a cannon ball strike the ground in front of him and “come bounding along like a rabbit.” It hit him in the knee. Though removed to the field hospital, he died that night. Lieutenant Ed Keene took a mortal wound and was sent back. Hanson lost by his count fifty men in crossing that open space, yet not a man fired his rifle until they reached the woods. Then the Orphans poured forth a volley, while Forrest engaged hand-to-hand for the battery. When the Kentuckians got within forty yards of the Federals, the bluecoats abandoned their position and their artillery. Now Hanson saw Graves bring his battery forward to their support. The young artillerist took over the splendid captured cannon, and “Old Flintlock” led his regiment forward again several hundred yards. The enemy had retired completely, opening to them a road that led to the federal flanks and rear, and both Hanson and Forrest saw the worth of what they had taken. While they prepared to hold what they felt might be a pivotal position, orders came from Pillow directing them to return to their trenches on the right of the line. Grant, too, had been busy.
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While Buckner attacked the federal center, Grant sent part of his own Army against the right of the Confederate line, the very area Hanson had left. Now, as “Bench-leg” and his rowdy Orphans returned to the right, they found the enemy advancing. He sent six companies running for the advance rifle pits, hoping to slow the Federals long enough for him to reoccupy the trenches with his remaining companies. A few of the men actually got into their rifle pits before the enemy, but they were too few. After a brief but hot firefight, the Confederates retreated. The casualties, by now, about 4
P.M.
, were substantial. Company B lost its captain, Ed Keene, early in the fight. Now it was led by the captain of Company G, Ed Spears, even though he was hit and carrying his arm in a sling. Yet Spears, like the rest of the Kentuckians, abandoned the rifle pits to the enemy.

Hanson re-formed the regiment somewhat, and then three times assaulted the trenches. Spears, wound and all, “seemed ready, indeed anxious,” as one man of his company put it, “to lead us in a bayonet charge to drive the enemy out of the works which they had taken from us.” The best that the Kentuckians could accomplish was to drive the Federals out of the trenches briefly, but the bluecoats only stopped on the other side of the earth rampart thrown up in front of the trenches, where they turned and used the rampart as a breastwork. Finally Hanson and another regiment, the 18th Tennessee, withdrew in some confusion. They rallied on the rear crest of the hill, though much intermingled, when Buckner arrived and ordered them into line, ignoring company or regimental organization. Indeed, one who was there said Buckner “stood where men were falling around him as calm as on review.” Hanson, too, steadied the men by his example. Despite their situation, darkness approaching, the enemy in possession of his trenches, and the men exhausted, he had time to be pleased with his regiment. “The entire regiment did all I expected of them,” he would tell his wife in a few weeks, “and that you know was a great deal.”

Hanson himself narrowly escaped injury. The lower left leg of his trousers was shot away without hurt to him. A bullet came close enough to pass through the nightshirt that he kept stuffed in the pocket of his uniform jacket. And when he started to mount his horse during one of the charges, a cannon ball struck and killed the animal. Graves, who brought two pieces from his battery to assist in stabilizing Hanson’s new line atop the hill, also had narrow misses. After the firing died in the fading light, he walked forward over the contested field and found a young federal soldier, severely wounded and in great suffering. Graves brought him behind the lines to a rifle pit occupied by Company B of the 4th Kentucky, the company assigned to Graves. One of the gunners in the company, Oliver Steele of Henderson County, recognized the young federal soldier as his own brother. Here for the first time, though certainly not the last in this war, the Orphans discovered the horror of what was, for Kentucky, truly a “brothers’ war.” How much more an Orphan Ollie Steele felt when his brother died in the pit that night.

With the safety of nightfall, Buckner pulled Hanson farther up the hill he occupied, and there attempted to build a new defense. “This position was a stronger one than the one lost, and every effort was made that night to construct defenses,” Hanson reported, “but the
men were so exhausted from labor and loss of sleep that it was utterly impossible.” Buckner continued moving among the Orphans calming them, but he knew that another battle the next day would certainly be the end of them. That night in a conference with Pillow and Floyd he declared that the 2d Kentucky was “as good a regiment as there was in the service.” Yet in attempting to retake the trenches this afternoon, he had been actually forced to grasp as many as twenty men to turn them to forward against the enemy. Many of the Orphans were so exhausted from loss of sleep and exposure that they could not think, much less fight. “It was not your fault, my brave boys,” Buckner said to them as they futilely worked at new defenses, “it was not your fault.” Those sensible enough to realize what had happened that day felt downcast that in their first battle they lost their position to the enemy. Buckner’s words were a little reassuring. Then he left to discuss the gravity of the situation with the other generals, and the Orphans were alone.

The cold, perhaps forgotten in the fight, returned with renewed bitterness. The men started pitiful little fires atop the hill and huddled around them for warmth, sulking moodily over the failure of the day, or else looking with equal gloom toward the bloody work that dawn must surely bring. A few managed sleep, only to be aroused at 3
A.M.
, February 16. Hanson formed them in line and led them to the left again, in the direction of the road along which they attacked so successfully the day before. Yes, certainly, they would go into action here again. Most believed they knew why. Grant heavily outnumbered the Confederates at Fort Donelson. They were surrounded, everyone knew. Obviously they could not withstand more siege, as demonstrated by the federal gains on the right on February 15. Now the Confederates were going to attack down this road again and cut their way through to safety, perhaps to Nashville.

Hanson halted the regiment in a ravine near the scene of its success of yesterday. He had passed a sleepless night, as usual, yet he never let himself relax in his effort to keep the men ready for the fight. He was earning his $195 per month colonel’s pay. The regiment stood in line for an hour, perhaps two. A. G. Montgomery of Company B was not with it, doing some volunteer duty for Buckner. Then a message came to Hanson. He spoke to the men, “said to us in a husky voice,” one recalled, “Go to your places, boys, and cook something to eat.” Then he added, “The war is about over for us!” There would be no attack,
no breakout, no escape. Private Montgomery had carried a flag of truce to Grant. Floyd and Pillow, with Forrest’s cavalry, had escaped from the encircling enemy during the night. Buckner had refused to go with them. “For my part,” he said, “I will stay with the men, and share their fate.” Their fate would be captivity, for the message Private Montgomery bore to Grant was a request for terms of surrender.

Dejection overpowered the command. All of the Orphans, Hanson included, believed that they had taken an avenue of escape that would have saved most of the Army, had Pillow not called them back on the day before. Now to be told that they were prisoners, soon to be captives in some northern cell, while Floyd and Pillow had escaped to safety, was bitter news. Many would never forgive the generals for escaping. None would ever forget the loyalty and self-sacrifice shown by Buckner in remaining to stand by them.

Soon federal guards appeared and the Orphans were disarmed, and Graves relieved of his field pieces. It was a humiliating experience, yet one with ironic overtones. Men from the 7th Iowa mingled with Hanson’s Kentuckians in disarming them and took particular note of the Mississippi rifles carried by some of the captives. One soldier saw an inscription on the stock of a rifle and shouted out in surprise. It indicated that this was one of the rifles with which old John Brown of Kansas armed his followers in their raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. When Brown’s men surrendered, their weapons went into the Virginia arsenals, and when Virginia seceded, these same weapons were given to the Confederate service. Among those thousand rifles that Governor Letcher so kindly sent Breckinridge last fall, then, were some of the very same rifles that had fired what many regarded as the first real shots of the war over two years before. Having carried these rifles for a couple of months now, it came as some surprise to the Orphans that they were using John Brown’s guns to spit lead back at the abolitionists.