History of Morgan's Cavalry

The weapon which was always preferred by the officers and men of the command, was the rifle known as the "medium Enfield." The short Enfield was very convenient to carry, but was deficient both in length of range and accuracy. The long Enfield, without any exception the best of all rifles, was unwieldy either to carry or to use, as sometimes became necessary, on horseback. The Springfield rifle, nearly equal to the long Enfield, was liable to the same objections, although in a less degree. Now that the military world has finally decided in favor of breech-loading guns, it may seem presumptuous to condemn them; but, so far as my own experience goes, they are decidedly inferior. When I say inferior, I mean not so much that they will not carry far, nor accurately, although a fair trial of every sort I could lay my hands upon with the Enfield and Springfield, convinced me of the superiority, in these respects, of the two latter; but that for other reasons they are not so effective as the muzzle-loading guns. Of the two best patterns, the Sharp and the Spencer – for the Maynard is a pop-gun, and the others are so contrived that, generally, after one shot, the shell of the cartridge sticks in the chamber – of these two, I have seen the Sharp do the most execution. It has been the verdict of every officer of the Western Confederate cavalry with whom I have talked upon the subject, and it certainly has been my experience, that those Federal cavalry regiments which were armed with breech-loading guns did least execution. The difference in the rapidity with which men dropped when exposed to the fire of an infantry regiment, and the loss from that of a cavalry regiment of equal strength, even when the latter fought well, ought of itself to go far to settle the question, for the federal infantry were all armed with muzzle-loading guns.

A close study of the subject will convince any man that the very fact of having to load his gun will make a soldier comparatively cool and steady. If he will stay to load at all, and will fix his mind upon what he is doing, he will become cool enough to take aim. While if he has only to stick in a cartridge and shoot, or turn a crank and pull trigger, he will fire fast, but he will fire wildly. I have seen some of the steadiest soldiers I ever knew, men who were dead shots with an Enfield, shoot as if they were aiming at the sun with a Spencer. The Spencer rifle would doubtless be an excellent weapon for a weak line to hold works with, where the men were accustomed to note the ground accurately, and would, therefore, be apt to aim low, and it is desirable to pour in a rapid, continuous fire to stagger an attacking line.

It is perhaps a first-rate gun for small skirmishes on horseback, although for those, our cavalry decidedly preferred the revolver. But in battle, when lines and numbers are engaged, accurate and not rapid firing is desirable. If one fiftieth of the shots from either side were to take effect in battle, the other would be annihilated. If rapid firing is so desirable, why do the same critics who advocate it also recommend that troops shall hold their fire until they can pour in deadly volleys? Why do they deprecate so much firing, and recommend the use of the bayonet?

It is folly to talk to men who have seen battles, about the moral effect of rapid firing, and of "bullets raining around men's heads like hail stones." That is like the straggler's excuse to General Lee that he was "stung by a bomb." Any man who has ever heard lines of battle engaged, knows that, let the men fire fast or slow, the nicest ear can detect no interval between the shots; the musketry sounds like the incessant, unintermitted crash of a gong – even cannonading, when one or two hundred guns are working, sounds like the long roll of a drum – and the hiss of bullets is perfectly ceaseless. Good troops will fight well with almost any sort of guns. Mean troops will not win, no matter how they are armed. If the matter were investigated, it would probably be found that the regiments which won most distinction, in the late war on this continent, on both sides, fired the fewest number of rounds.

At one time – when Morgan's command was somewhat demoralized – the men were loud in describing the terrific effect of the Spencer rifle, when it was notorious that, at that time, it was an unusual occurrence to lose a man – they subsequently became ashamed of their panic, and met the troops carrying Spencer rifles, with more confidence than those armed in any other way. It would be very convenient to attribute every whipping we ever got to the use of breech-loading rifles by our antagonists, but it would be very wide of the truth. It was impossible, however, to obtain, when we were organizing at Knoxville, the exact description of guns we wished. One company, was armed with the long Enfield, another had the medium, and Company A got the short Enfield. Company C was furnished with Mississippi rifles and Company B retained the shot-guns which they had used for nearly a year. Company E was provided with a gun, called from the stamp upon the barrel, the "Tower gun;" it was of English make, and was a sort of Enfield carbine. Its barrel was rather short and bore immense; it carried a ball larger than the Belgian. Its range and accuracy were first rate. The roar of this gun was almost as loud as that of a field piece and the tremendous bullet it carried would almost shatter an ordinary wall.

It was some months before each company of the regiment was armed with the same or similar guns. Nearly every man had a pistol, and some two. Shortly afterward, when they were captured in sufficient numbers, each man was provided with a pair. The pistol preferred and usually worn by the men, was the army Colt furnished to the Federal cavalry regiments – this patent is far the best and most effective of any I have ever seen. At this time two mountain howitzers were sent from Richmond for Morgan's use. It is unnecessary to describe a piece so well known, but it may be as well to say, that no gun is so well adapted in all respects to the wants of cavalry, as these little guns. With a large command, it is always well enough to have two or four pieces of longer range and yet of light draught, such as the three-inch Parrot – but if I were required to dispense with one or the other, I would choose to retain the former. They can be drawn (with a good supply of ammunition in the limbers), by two horses over any kind of road. They can go over ravines, up hills, through thickets, almost any where, in short, that a horseman can go; they can be taken, without attracting attention, in as close proximity to the enemy as two horsemen can go – they throw shell with accuracy eight hundred yards, quite as far as there is any necessity for, generally in cavalry fighting – they throw canister and grape, two and three hundred yards, as effectively as a twelve pounder – they can be carried by hand right along with the line, and as close to the enemy as the line goes – and they make a great deal more noise than one would suppose from their size and appearance. If the carriages are well made, they can stand very hard service, and they are easily repaired, if injured. These little guns were attached to the Second Kentucky, and the men of that regiment became much attached to them. They called them familiarly and affectionately, the "bull pups," and cheered them whenever they were taken into a fight. They remained with us, doing excellent service, until just before the Ohio raid; and, then, when General Bragg's ordnance officer arbitrarily took them away from us, it came near raising a mutiny in the regiment. I would, myself, have gladly seen him tied to the muzzle of one of them and shot off. They were captured by the enemy in two weeks after they were taken from us.

Just before Morgan left Knoxville to go on the expedition known as "the First Kentucky raid," he was joined by a gentleman "from abroad," whose history had been a curious and extraordinary series of exciting adventures, and who now came to see something of our war. This was Lieutenant Colonel St. Leger Greenfell, of the English service, and of all the very remarkable characters who have figured (outside of popular novels) in this age, he will receive the suffrages of our Western cavalrymen, for pre-eminence in devil-may-care eccentricity. He had commenced life (I believe) by running away from his father, because the latter would not permit him to enter the army, and in doing so, he showed the good sense that he really possessed, for the army was the proper place for him – provided they went to war often enough. He served five years in some French regiment in Algeria, and then quitting the service, lived for a number of years in Tangiers, where he did a little business with the Moorish batteries, when the French bombarded the place. He served four years with Abd-El-Kader, of whom he always spoke in the highest terms, as having been every thing that he ought to have been, except a member of the Church of England. Having exhausted life in Africa, he looked elsewhere for excitement, and passed many years of his subsequent life in great happiness and contentment, amid the pleasant scenes of the Crimean war, the Sepoy rebellion, and Garibaldi's South American service.

When the war broke out over here he came of course – and taking a fancy to Morgan, from what he had heard of him, came to join him. He was very fond of discussing military matters, but did not like to talk about himself, and although I talked with him daily, it was months before he told any thing of his history. He was a thorough and very accomplished soldier – and may have encountered something in early life that he feared, but if so, it had ceased to exist.

He became Morgan's Adjutant General and was of great assistance to him, but sometimes gave trouble by his impracticable temper – he persisted, among other things, in making out all papers in the style he had learned in the English service, the regulations and orders of the War Department "to the contrary notwithstanding."

He was always in a good temper when matters were active – I never saw him hilarious but once – and that was the day after the battle of Hartsville; he had just thrashed his landlord, and doubled up a brother Englishman, in a "set-to" about a mule, and was contemplating an expedition on the morrow, with General Morgan to Nashville. He was the only gentleman, I ever knew, who liked to fight with his fists, and he was always cheerful and contented when he could shoot and be shot at.

After he left Morgan he was made Chief Inspector of Cavalry, and became the terror of the entire "front." He would have been invaluable as commander of a brigade of cavalry, composed of men who (unlike our volunteers) appreciated the "military necessity" of occasionally having an officer to knock them in the head. If permitted to form, discipline, and drill such a brigade of regular cavalry after his own fashion, he would have made gaps in many lines of battle, or have gotten his "blackguards well peppered" in trying.

Sometime in the latter part of June, Colonel Hunt of Georgia arrived at Knoxville with a "Partisan Ranger" regiment between three and four hundred strong, to accompany Morgan upon his contemplated raid.

When the entire force of able bodied and mounted men was estimated, it was found eight hundred and seventy-six strong. Hunt's regiment numbering about three hundred and fifty; mine, the Second Kentucky, about three hundred and seventy, and Gano's squadron making up the balance.

Fifty or sixty men, from all the commands, were left at Knoxville for lack of horses. Perhaps two hundred men of this force, with which Morgan commenced the expedition, were unarmed, and a much larger number were badly mounted and provided with the most indifferent saddles and equipments.

The command set out from Knoxville on the morning of the 4th of July, 1862, and took the road to Sparta (a little place on the confines of the rugged mountainous country which separates Middle Tennessee from the rich valley of East Tennessee) in which Knoxville is situated. Sparta is one hundred and four miles from Knoxville. We reached it, after tolerably hard marching, for the road was terribly rough, on the evening of the third day, and encamped five miles beyond it on the road to Livingston.

While traversing the region between Knoxville and Sparta, we were repeatedly fired upon by bushwhackers, but had only one man killed by them – a Texian of Gano's squadron. We made many unsuccessful attempts to capture them, but they always chose the most inaccessible points to fire from and we could never get to them. Frequently they would shoot at us from a ledge of rocks not forty feet above our heads, and yet to get to it we would have had to go hundreds of yards – they consequently always escaped.

At Sparta, Champ Ferguson reported himself as a guide, and I, for the first time, saw him, although I had often heard of him before. He had the reputation of never giving quarter, and, no doubt, deserved it (when upon his own private expeditions), although when with Morgan he attempted no interference with prisoners. This redoubted personage was a native of Clinton county, Kentucky, and was a fair specimen of the kind of characters which the wild mountain country produces. He was a man of strong sense, although totally uneducated, and of the intense will and energy, which, in men of his stamp and mode of life, have such a tendency to develope into ferocity, when they are in the least injured or opposed. He was grateful for kindness, and instinctively attached to friends, and vindictive to his enemies. He was known as a desperate man before the war, and ill-treatment of his wife and daughter, by some soldiers and Home-guards enlisted in his own neighborhood, made him relentless in his hatred of all Union men; he killed all the parties concerned in the outrage upon his family, and, becoming then an outlaw, kept up that style of warfare. It is probable that, at the close of the war, he did not himself know how many men he had killed. He had a brother, of the same character as himself, in the Union army, and they sought each other persistently, mutually bent on fratricide. Champ became more widely known than any of them, but the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee were filled with such men, who murdered every prisoner that they took, and they took part, as their politics inclined them, with either side. For a long time Ferguson hunted, or was hunted by, a man of his own order and nearly as notorious on the other side, namely, "Tinker Dave Beattie." On the evening of the 7th, we encamped in the vicinity of Livingston. Leaving early next morning, by midday we reached the Cumberland river at the ford near the small village of Selina. Here Colonel Morgan received positive information of the strength and position of the enemy at Tompkinsville, eighteen miles from Selina. He had learned at Knoxville that a Federal garrison was at this place, and had determined to attack it. One battalion of the 9th Pennsylvania, under command of Major Jordan, about three hundred and fifty strong, constituted the entire force. It was Morgan's object to surprise and capture the whole of it. He accordingly sent forward scouts to watch and report every thing going on at their camp, while he halted the bulk of the command until nightfall. The men employed the interval of rest in attention to their horses, and in bathing in the river. At eleven o'clock the March was resumed; the road was rough and incumbered at some points with fallen timber, so that the column made slow progress. When within four or five miles of Tompkinsville, Gano's squadron and Hamilton's company of Tennessee Partisan Rangers, which had joined us the evening before, were sent by a road which led to the right to get in the rear of the enemy and upon his line of retreat toward Glasgow. The rest of the command reached Tompkinsville at five o'clock. It was consequently broad daylight, and the enemy had information of our approach in time to form to receive us. Colonel Hunt was formed upon the left, and my regiment upon the right, with the howitzers in the center. It was altogether unnecessary to form any reserve, and as our numbers were so superior, our only care was to "lap around" far enough on the flanks to encircle the game.

The enemy were posted on a thickly wooded hill, to reach which we had to cross open fields. They fired, therefore, three or four volleys while we were closing on them. The Second Kentucky did not fire until within about sixty yards of them, and one volley was then enough. The fight did not last ten minutes. The enemy lost about twenty killed and twenty or thirty wounded. Thirty prisoners, only, were taken on the ground, but Gano and Hamilton intercepted and captured a good many more, including the commander, Major Jordan. Our force was too much superior in strength for them to have made much resistance, as we outnumbered them more than two to one.

Our loss was only in wounded, we had none killed. But a severe loss was sustained in Colonel Hunt, whose leg was shattered and it was necessary to leave him; he died in a few days of the wound. Three of the Texians also were wounded in their chase after the fugitives. The tents, stores, and camp equipage were destroyed. A wagon train of twenty wagons and fifty mules were captured and a number of cavalry horses. Abundant supplies of coffee, sugar, etc., etc., were found in the camp. The guns captured were useless breech-loading carbines, which were thrown away.

Leaving Tompkinsville at three o'clock in the afternoon, after paroling the prisoners, we reached Glasgow about one o'clock that night. This town was unoccupied by any garrison, and its people were very friendly to us. Company C, of the old squadron had been principally recruited here. The command rested at Glasgow until 9 a. m. next day; during the time, the ladies busied themselves in preparing breakfast for us, and before we left, every man had taken in a three days' supply. A straggler captured at Glasgow gave us some "grape vine" intelligence which annoyed us no little. He stated that McClellan had taken Richmond. When we left Knoxville, the battle of the seven days was going on, and we had, of course, heard nothing after we started. Our prisoner, however, was gravely assured, just before he was paroled, that a courier had just reached us with the information that McClellan was in Richmond, but as a prisoner, and with half his army in the same condition. This fellow, who represented himself to be an officer, turned out to be one of the buglers of the Ninth Pennsylvania, and all the information he gave was as reliable as the McClellan story. A halt of two or three hours was made at Bear Wallow, to enable Mr. Ellsworth (popularly known as "Lightning"), the telegraphic operator on Colonel Morgan's staff, to tap the line between Louisville and Nashville, and obtain the necessary information regarding the position of the Federal forces in Kentucky. Connecting his own instrument and wire with the line, Ellsworth began to take off the dispatches. Finding the news come slow he entered into a conversation with Louisville and obtained much of what was wanted. He in return communicated such information as Colonel Morgan desired to have the enemy act upon. One statement, made at hap hazard, and with no other knowledge to support it, except that Forrest was in Middle Tennessee, was singularly verified. Morgan caused Ellsworth to telegraph that Forrest had taken Murfreesboro' and had captured the entire garrison. Forrest did exactly what was attributed to him on that or the next day. A heavy storm coming on caused them, after several fruitless efforts to continue, to desist telegraphing.

The column was put in motion again immediately upon Colonel Morgan's return, and marching all night got within about fifteen miles of Lebanon by 11 a. m. next morning. Here Company B was detached, to push rapidly to the railroad between Lebanon and Lebanon junction, and ordered to destroy it, so that troops might not be thrown into Lebanon in time to oppose us. The march was not resumed until three or four in the afternoon, so that when we reached Rolling Fork river, six miles from Lebanon, it was dark. Colonel Morgan, who was riding with his staff in front of the advance guard, was fired upon as he entered the small covered bridge across the stream, by a party of the enemy stationed at the other end of it. His hat was shot from his head, but neither he nor any of his staff were touched. One of the howitzers was immediately run up and a shell was thrown into the bridge. A platoon of the leading company was dismounted and carried at a double-quick to clear it. When they reached it, the enemy, alarmed by the shell, which had killed one man, had retreated, the bottom of the bridge was found to have been torn up, and a short time was spent in repairing it. This was a strong position and one which the enemy ought, by all means, to have occupied with his entire force.

There was no ford for six or eight miles above or below; the bridge was the only means of crossing without a wide detour; and not twenty yards from the mouth of the bridge (on the side held by the enemy), and perfectly commanding it, was a steep bluff (not too high) covered with timber, and affording an admirable natural fortification. As soon as the bridge was repaired, the column crossed and pressed on to Lebanon. Within a mile of the town, skirmishing commenced with the force which held it. Two companies (E and C of the Second Kentucky) were thrown out on foot, and advanced at a brisk pace, driving the enemy before them. Two or three of the enemy were killed; our loss was nothing. The town was surrendered by its commandant about ten o'clock; some two hundred prisoners were taken.

Pickets were immediately posted on every road, and the whole command encamped in such a manner that it could be immediately established in line. It was necessary to remain at Lebanon until the large quantity of stores of all kinds, which were there, were disposed of, and, as we were now in the midst of enemies, no precaution could be omitted. Captain Allen, who, as has been mentioned, was detached with Company B of the Second Kentucky to prevent the train from bringing reinforcements to Lebanon, struck the railroad at New Hope Church and had just commenced to destroy it, when a train came with a large number of troops on board for Lebanon. He attacked it, and a skirmish of a few minutes resulted in the train going back. The night was very dark, and little loss, if any, was inflicted on either side.

On the next day, an examination of the stores showed an abundance of every description. A sufficient number of excellent guns were gotten to arm every man efficiently, and some thousands were destroyed. A large building was found to be filled with cartridges and fixed ammunition. An abundant supply of ammunition for small arms was thus obtained, and a fresh supply of ammunition was also gotten for the howitzers. After taking what was needed, all this was destroyed. There was also a stone magazine not far from the depot, which was full of powder. The powder was all taken out of it, and thrown into the stream near by.

Very large supplies of provisions were found – meat, flour, sugar, coffee, etc. – which were turned over to the citizens, and when they had helped themselves, the remainder was burned. A great deal of clothing had also been collected here, and the men were enabled to provide themselves with every thing which they needed in the way of under-clothing. While at Lebanon, copies of a flaming proclamation, written and published at Glasgow, were circulated.

After the destruction of the stores had been completed, and Ellsworth had closed his business at the telegraph office, the command was again put in motion. It left the town about two p. m., on the Springfield road. Before leaving Knoxville, Colonel Morgan, appreciating the necessity of having an advance-guard which could be thoroughly relied on, and disinclined to trust to details, changed every day, for that duty, had organized a body of twenty-five men, selected with great care from the entire force under his command, to constitute an advance-guard for the expedition. So well did this body perform the service assigned it, that the men composing it, with some additions to make up the tale as others were taken out, were permanently detailed for that duty, and it became an honor eagerly sought, and a reward for gallantry and good conduct second only to promotion, to be enrolled in "the advance." The non-commissioned officers were chosen with the same care, and First Lieutenant Charles W. Rogers of Company E, formerly of the First Kentucky Infantry, was appointed to command it. This officer possessed in an eminent degree the cool judgment, perfect fearlessness, command of men, and shrewdness of perception requisite for such an office.