Initiation of the Georgia Campaign.

Confederate Veteran
Volume 12, Number 2, Page 76-77
February 1904

INITIATION OF THE GEORGIA CAMPAIGN.
BY W. H. DAVIS, FOURTH TENNESSEE CAVALRY, DALLAS, TEX.

In the winter of 1863-64 Gen. Kilpatrick was placed in command of all the cavalry attached to Sherman's army. If I am correctly informed, Gen. Kilpatrick and Gen. Joseph Wheeler were at West Point at the same time, possibly in the same class. Son after assuming command, it was reported that Kilpatrick had sent a communication to Wheeler informing him that, as soon as the weather would permit, he would pay him a visit. Wheeler replied: "Come ahead when you are ready. We will give you the warmest reception you ever had."

The opposing armies were in winter quarters—Sherman's at Ringgold and Johnston's at Dalton, Ga. Wheeler's Corps was encamped at Tunnel Hill, about seven miles north of Dalton. "Paul's People" were brigaded with the First Tennessee, Ninth Tennessee Battalion, and Second Georgia, under command of Gen. W. Y. C. Hume, the four regiments being camped along the main road leading to Ringgold.

About May 1, 1864, Lieut. Rice McLean was in command of a picket of sixty men three miles in advance of our camp, with his vedettes one-half mile still in advance, occupying five stations—two to the right, two to the left and one on main road. The writer was on the first station to the right of road.

All nature was attiring itself in the verdant robes of spring, and the world looked too beautiful to stain it with human blood. The pale moon's soft rays broke through the drifting clouds and seemed to reproach our warlike attitude. The thousands of the mellow-voiced whip-poor-wills echoed their doleful notes through the leafy forest and up the mountain side, and had the semblance of lamentations over our wild work of human destruction called glorious war.

When the aurora's first rays were tinging with gold the floating clouds in the Orient, the cry of "Halt!" and reports of two rifles rang out on the balmy air. All the vedettes beat a hasty retreat, and rallied on the forty men at the picket base, who, with Lieut. McLean, were in their saddles awaiting the enemy's advance. There were barricades across the road at intervals of about two hundred yards from the vedette line to our main camp, which impeded the advance of a brigade that was essaying to carry out Kilpatrick's threat. Behind the first barricade, about one hundred feet in rear of our base, Lieut. McLean took up his position and awaited their approach. We could hear them sometime before they came in sight, the road being tortuous and skirted by dense woodland on each side. It was not yet good daylight when we delivered a solid volley into their vanguard, who retired on the head of their main column, which proudly came on, elated by the vainglorious threat of their unworthy chieftan. Again the sharp crack of sixty rifles gave that "warm reception" promised by "Little Jo," and our brave lieutenant led us to the next barricade, located in the edge of a woodland beyond an opening, and deployed to the right and left of the road behind a heavy worm fence, dismounted, each man holding his own horse. This time the enemy's advance emerged into the open very cautiously, and deployed as skirmishers. Again sixty rifles licked out their forked tongues of fire and sixty missiles of death went whizzing on their mission of destruction. Mounting our horses, we galloped to the next barricade, to again advise our foes that we had not left the country, when we could see old Paul at the head of the regiment with his long black plume waving from a ponderous sombrero, standing at a halt. We delivered another volley, and under shelter of the timber galloped across the valley to meet him. He ordered Lieut McLean to form his men on the right of the road, while he formed his "People" and Ninth Tennessee Battalion on the opposite side. But a few moments elapsed until we could see the dark outline of two regiments emerge from the woodland Lieut. McLean and his men had just abandoned, and form in line of battle just in the open, about two hundred yards distant. At this juncture Jim Nance's old bugle sounded "Forward!" Advancing to a branch that meandered through the valley, some fifty yards in our front, a sheet of flame shot out from the enemy's line, when Nance blasted the "Charge!" With that proverbial Rebel yell we swept up the hill without firing a shot until within easy pistol range. We let go our carbines, dropped them in the sling, and with our six-shooters proceeded to do business "wid 'em." The Yanks soon discovered that the Johnnies had come to entertain them with that "warmest reception" of which Gen. Wheeler had admonished their vaunting chieftain. They wheeled about and besought shelter from the adjacent forest, while Nance continued blasting "Charge!" and our six-shooters kept up the sweet music that characterized the fiddle of Nero during the conflagration of the Eternal City. After driving them through the forest named and the open beyond, we came upon two regiments dismounted and lying behind a fence in the edge of another woodland, who poured a galling fire into our line, which, of necessity, by this time was more or less disorganized. We at once retreated to the woodland we had passed, and moved by the left flank unobserved around a hill sheltering us from view, and fell upon the dismounted men on their right flank, pouring into them an enfilading fire, which caused quick and disastrous rout. This forced them to retire to a position beyond where had been our extreme outpost, two regiments forming at the foot of an elongated hill that rose solitary from a level plain, and two regiments in open fields to the left and opposite this hill.

In the meantime a battery of three twelve-pound howitzers had been brought up to our line and planted on a hill to the right of main road, about on line with our quondam vedette stations and about three hundred yards from the line now occupied by the enemy. Old Paul at once decided to charge the two regiments at the foot of the hill afore mentioned, which had to be done over level fields entirely open. Successful in this venture, we discovered our full strength to our enemy as we gained the hill. All this time our line in the open was completely exposed to the fire of the two regiments in the field. Ed Ownsby, of my company, and myself went to the right of the hill and rode as nearly to the top as we could, dismounted and climbed over afoot to a point on the western slope opposite the left flank of the men in the field, and took up positions behind two majestic oak trees and commenced, unobserved, an enfilading fire directly down the enemy's line. We were taking deliberate aim; and the end of their line being not over one hundred yards distant, I cannot see how we could miss hitting either a man or a horse every shot. At this period our ammunition was about exhausted, and old Paul withdrew the major portion of his command, under cover of the hill, to the foot of the elevation occupied by our battery.

The Yanks, quickly discovering this fact, made a charge. Ownsby and I, seeing our predicament, started for our horses. Arriving at the foot of the eastern slop of the hill, we had a head-end collision with ten bluecoats, who were as much surprised as we were, but demanded our surrender. Seeing our situation at a glance, we put spurs to our horses and darted across a cornfield, the Yanks in hot pursuit, both they and ourselves emptying our six-shooters as we went. During our run, and as we approached the fence on the opposite side of the field, I said to Ownsby: "Ed, we are in for it this whack." Our horses seemed to realize how closely we were being hemmed up, and cleared the fence as though it were not there. Old Paul had the precaution to let down gaps at intervals in the fence for the skirmishers he had left in front. They passed through, closely followed by the Yanks. Simultaneously the batter and our line "let fly," and no doubt the bluecoats thought "Sheol had broken loose in Georgia, and no pitch hot." Anyway, we confirmed them in that belief in about a pair of minutes, for we put them north of the Chickamauga in a jiffy. This was the initiation of the famous Georgia campaign, and from this time until the surrender, May 2, 1865, there was scarcely a day that "Paul's People" failed to inhale the sulphurous odor of gunpowder.