CHAPTER XVI.
I Refuse to Become a Teamster.
While at Corinth, immediately after the battle of Shiloh, we were ordered to furnish two wagon drivers and called for volunteers, having two wagons to the company. There was not a man in the company that would agree to drive wagons and we were instructed to draw lots, when, with my usual luck, I drew lots to drive wagons, which was a four-mule team; and I had never done any driving before. The other party was Jared Gross, who also objected to driving mules. I told General Wharton that I didn’t leave my home and everything I had to come out there and drive a mule team and that I wouldn’t and couldn’t do so. He said, “Now, Graber, you know you agreed to this drawing and it is not right or fair for you to refuse.” I told him that I knew it was mean, but I did not expect that it would fall to my lot to drive this wagon, when he finally told me, “If you do not obey this order I will have to have you court martialed.” I told him, “All right, Colonel Wharton, you may punish me as much as you like, but I am not going to drive that wagon.”
Some one then proposed to hire a couple of men and pay them fifty dollars a month each, which was done, and Duncan, with another man from Brazoria County, whose name I have forgotten, volunteered to take the job.
After crossing the Tennessee River at Lamb’s Ferry, we left our wagons and considerable private baggage with cooking utensils and tents, at Bear Creek. A few days after, the Federal cavalry crossed the river and captured the whole outfit, except the men in charge of the same. This was the last of our luxuries, tents, cooking utensils or wagons never being issued after that, except to our headquarters or the commanding general and his staff, who employed Duncan to drive the headquarters wagon.
Having been engaged in this, and fearing that the war would end and he would have to go home and report he had never been in any engagements, Duncan decided that he must go into the battle of Perryville with us, where he lost his life, as stated.
After our experience with the ordnance train and battery, our command followed in the rear of our infantry line, which slowly, but gradually, drove the enemy until dark, capturing several batteries of fine guns. By one of the batteries we found the body of General Jackson, a Federal general from Kentucky, who, when he found his infantry had abandoned the battery, seemed determined to throw away his life and, single and alone, dashed up to one of our infantry men, cutting at him with his sword, when the man shot and killed him.
After dark we tied our horses in the edge of a woods, to a rail fence which enclosed a large corn field, where the desperate fighting stopped. We then went into the field and secured some corn for our horses. As the most of the corn was destroyed by the lines of battle, we had to pass over a good deal of ground to get sufficient corn for our horses. At the point where I stopped gathering, having secured as many ears of corn as I could carry in my arms, the dead lay so thick I believe I could have stepped from one to the other within a radius of ten or fifteen feet. Among them I noticed the dead body of a magnificent looking man lying on his back with his eyes open, seemingly looking at the starry firmament. Noticing that he wore an officer’s suit, I turned up his collar which disclosed two stars, denoting his rank as lieutenant-colonel. I afterwards learned that he commanded a Tennessee regiment in Cheatham’s Division.
During the night an armistice was had by mutual consent, for the purpose of taking care of the wounded and burying the dead. We were ordered to destroy the small arms left on the field, which were very thick, by breaking the stocks on the trees, which job we soon abandoned because many of the guns were loaded. The batteries captured by our people were exchanged for our own guns, as we only had horses to carry off the number captured, leaving our inferior guns spiked on the field.
The battle of Perryville, for the number engaged, has always ranked as one of the most desperately fought battles of the war, equal to Shiloh, Chickamauga and others for desperate fighting, and which the respective losses of the two armies fully sustained.
The battle of Perryville proved such a blow to the Federal commander that it made him more cautious in his rapid advance. Our infantry during the night commenced their retreat with the wagon train, artillery and everything belonging to them, moving towards Harrodsburg, where we were met by General Kirby Smith and his army, coming back from Cincinnati. At this point we found a very large amount of pickled pork in barrels, that had been collected for removal with our army, but had to be abandoned and was largely destroyed by our cavalry, still covering the retreat, as heretofore.
The enemy at this point crowded us pretty close and came very near forcing a general engagement again, which no doubt would have proven disastrous to our arms, because they outnumbered us at least four to one. Our cavalry service continued to cover the retreat except with occasional branching out to different points where army supplies were stored, notably Lebanon, where I was sent with a detail of three others to a man’s house by the name of Penick, who had a large plantation and owned a great many negroes. He was said to have a great deal of bacon, which we were instructed to have carried to Lebanon. On arriving at the house I went in and told the gentleman our business. He met us in the hall, joined by his wife and daughter and in answer to our demand that he have his negroes hitch up his wagons and load the meat, he spitefully told us that he had hid out his mules, negroes and bacon and said, “Get it, if you can.” In reasoning with him, trying to persuade him that we would certainly find his hidden stuff, he became very insulting, when I finally told him he was taking advantage of us, knowing well that his gray hair and the presence of the ladies would protect him from our resenting his insults, but told him if he had any boys to bring them out and we would settle the matter with them pretty quick. He said, “I have two boys, but they are in the army and if ever they meet you, they will meet you like men.” I asked him what branch of the service they were in, when he told me they were in the cavalry. I then told him that we had a cavalry fight a couple of weeks before at Bardstown, where no doubt his boys were engaged, when on his further enquiry about the engagement, I told him how we scattered them all over the country, killing and wounding a great many. The ladies burst into tears and went back into their room, and the old man had nothing more to say about his boys.
I then again tried to persuade him to give us at least one wagonload of bacon, promising him that if he would send his team and a boy to drive it to Lebanon, he would surely have them returned, when he again refused in a spiteful, insulting manner. I told him that we had understood he had some six or eight yoke of work-oxen and in Texas we knew all about handling oxen and we would go into his pasture and drive them up and hitch them to the wagons that were at the house, but this was only a threat. We gave him up as a bad job and when we reached the pike about three miles from there, we met a citizen who told us that Wheeler’s cavalry had evacuated Lebanon and burnt all the meat stored there, which we were induced to believe, and decided to ride back to the Harrodsburg Pike and get with our command, which we did.
Our army then continued to retreat, the main part of the army moving towards Crab Orchard, where we struck the Cumberland Gap road, while the army, under Kirby Smith, was struggling over Big Hill, and had still to join the main army at the junction of the roads at Pitman’s. The army then moved into the mountains on the Cumberland Gap road, which, owing to the character of the country, was generally restricted to a single wagon track. This stretched out our columns of retreat for perhaps twenty miles or more and cut up the road very badly, frequently causing wagons to stall. Two infantrymen consequently were detailed with every wagon, of which we had thirty-eight hundred, laden with provisions and valuable stores. This detail of two with each wagon was ordered to assist any wagon that was stalled by taking hold of the wheels, thereby helping the team to pull the wagon out of the rut.
A division commander was detailed every day to take charge of the wagon train and artillery and keep it moving. When a wagon stalled, the whole line of retreat, infantry, wagons and artillery behind it, would have to wait until it would move again, thereby seriously impeding our line of march and causing the cavalry in the rear desperate fighting sometimes to hold off the enemy.
It was reported of General Cheatham, when he had charge of the train, that one of his wagons was stalled, and he put spurs to his horse and rode up the line and reached the wagon. The driver was whipping his mules and the two infantrymen were standing by the roadside, resting on their guns. At the sight of this, he jumped off his horse, took hold of the spokes of the wagon wheel and tried to turn it, but all to no purpose. The two guards still stood resting on their guns. General Cheatham lost his patience and turned around and slapped one of the guards in the face. This happened to be an Irishman, who said, “Be God; if you were not Gineral Cheatham you couldn’t do this.” General Cheatham pulled off his sword belt, coat and hat and threw them down by the side of the road and said, “Now, there lies General Cheatham and here is Frank Cheatham; now light in.” They say that at this invitation the Irishman lit in and got the best of the bargain, of which General Cheatham never made any complaint. The two men then took hold of the wheels in conjunction with General Cheatham, and started up the wagon, and with that the whole line of retreat.
This incident was currently reported and generally believed by all who knew General Cheatham, but I would not be willing to vouch for the same, as it is almost past belief.
After leaving Crab Orchard, General Buell dispensed with his cavalry, as they were unable to cope with ours and moved only with his infantry and artillery in advance. To enter into the details of the rest of this campaign, would require too much space and will only say that the brigade of General Wharton, which always includes the Terry Rangers, in conjunction occasionally with other cavalry, were expected to and did succeed in retarding the pursuit of the enemy, restricting his advance to from six to eight miles a day only, thereby protecting our infantry column, as well as the artillery, ordnance and thirty-eight hundred wagons loaded with valuable army stores. On this retreat the infantry were called on only one time to fire a gun. We met the enemy in a general engagement at Mount Vernon, Barren Valley, Rocky Hill, Bushy Mound, Wild Cat, Pitman’s Road, Little Rock, Castle River and many other points, inflicting on them considerable loss. This mountain service on the part of the Rangers proved a most severe tax on their endurance, on account of being deprived of rations. At one time, for nearly two days, we depended on picking up raw corn left in the camps of artillery and wagons, where the horses and mules had been fed. A number of times, after fighting all day long, we had to go out into the hills ten or twelve miles to find forage for our horses before we could retire to get a little rest. Our camping places were frequently by the light of the enemy’s fires.
To give the reader a better idea of the valuable service we rendered, I will quote an order issued by General Wheeler, read to us at Cumberland Gap, October 23, 1862.
GENERAL ORDER NUMBER THREE:
“Soldiers of the Cavalry Corps, Army of Mississippi:
“The autumn campaign in Kentucky is over, your arduous duties, as the advance and rear guard, for the present, are finished. Your gallantry in action, your cheerful endurance in suffering from hunger, fatigue and exposure, render you worthy of all commendation. For nearly two months you have scarcely been for a moment without the range of the enemy’s musketry. In more than twenty pitched fights, many of which lasted throughout the day, you have successfully combated largely superior numbers of the enemy’s troops of all arms. Hovering continually near the enemy, you have engaged in no less than one hundred skirmishes. Upon the memorable field of Perryville, alone and unsupported, you engaged and held in check during the entire action, at least two infantry divisions of the opposing army. By your gallant charges on that day you completely dispersed and routed a vastly superior force of the enemy’s cavalry, driving them in confusion under their artillery and infantry supports, capturing in hand-to-hand conflicts many prisoners, forces and arms. Your continuous contact with the enemy has taught you to repose without fear under his guns, to fighting wherever found and to quietly make your bivouac by the light of his camp fires. On this continued series of combats and brilliant charges, many great men have fallen. We mourn their loss. We commend their valor. Let us emulate their soldierly virtues.
“JOSEPH WHEELER,
“Chief of Cavalry.”