Morgan's Men, a Narrative of Personal Experiences

THE BATTLE AT HARTSVILLE.

Sixty days after my enlistment our regiment was engaged in its first fight at Hartsville, Tenn., where Col. Morgan won his commission as brigadier general and achieved, perhaps, his most brilliant victory by killing and wounding over four hundred of the enemy and capturing two splendid Parrott guns with more than two thousand prisoners. On the day after this battle, I wrote a letter to my father and mother (the original of which has been preserved), headed as follows: “In camp two miles from Gen. Morgan’s headquarters and eight miles from Murfreesboro on the Lebanon Pike, Monday, December 8, 1862.” The fight occurred on Sunday.

Among other things, I gave in this letter the following account of our engagement at Hartsville, which may serve to illustrate the exuberance of spirits felt over that victory by a soldier of twenty years of age, after only two months’ service:

We’ve had only one battle yet, and that was on yesterday at Hartsville, in this State. I’ll give you a short description of it. Day before yesterday morning at nine o’clock we left camp with all of Morgan’s Brigade, except two regiments (Duke’s and Gano’s), and also the Ninth and Second Kentucky Regiments of Gen Roger Hanson’s brigade of infantry—in all about twenty-five hundred men, with five or six pieces of artillery. We marched through Lebanon, and went into camp after traveling thirty-four miles. Our battalion and two pieces of artillery were within four miles of the enemy. The other portions of our force took another route, crossing the Cumberland in the night and getting in the enemy’s rear. We left camp after sleeping one hour and a half, and got in position in five hundred yards of the enemy at five o’clock in the morning, before it was light. This hour was set by Morgan to begin the attack on the enemy on all sides; and well was it carried out, Morgan’s portion firing the first gun. The firing soon became general, and of all the fighting ever done that was the hottest for an hour and fifteen minutes. The bombs fell thick and fast over our heads, while Morgan’s men yelled at every step, we all closing in on the Yankees. I fired my gun only two or three times. We took the whole force prisoners, about twenty-two hundred men, the 10th Illinois, 106th and 108th Ohio, and two hundred Indiana cavalrymen, with two pieces of artillery. We took also all their small arms, wagons, etc.

Then occurs in this letter what may seem now somewhat ludicrous, but it is here and I will read it:

I captured a splendid overcoat, lined through and through, a fine black cloth coat, a pair of new woolen socks, a horse muzzle to feed in, an Enfield rifle, a lot of pewter plates, knives and forks, a good supply of smoking tobacco, an extra good cavalry saddle, a halter, and a pair of buckskin gloves, lined with lamb’s wool—all of which things I needed.

The officers of the forces captured were paroled and sent through the lines. One of them promised to see that this letter reached its destination, and in it I stated:

I’ll tell you how I’ve met with a chance to send this to you. It is by a very gentlemanly Yankee lieutenant whom we captured yesterday who says he’ll mail it to you from Nashville, and I think he’ll be as good as his word. I shall leave it unsealed, and he’ll get it through for me without trouble, I think.

But he failed to discharge the trust he had assumed. Some three weeks afterwards it was found at Camp Chase, Ohio, and sent to my father by a man named Samuel Kennedy.

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