Claiborne's History of Terry's Texas Rangers (Part 4)

A Confederate Cavalry Regiment Engaged in the Unfortunate War Between the States
NEW BIRMINGHAM TIMES, undated clipping, 1891.

continued from last issue

After the battle of Chickamauga and before Longstreet began his move into East Tennessee, and before the investment of Knoxville and the stirring times referred to hereafter, and before the Rangers were put under the command of Longstreet, I should give more than a general notice of the greatest cavalry raid ever made, reported or conceived in any previous war, of which we have any account.

Maj. General Joseph Wheeler had, in the last six months justly risen in the estimation of the army commanders so that he was intrusted with the command of 8,000 men, including Wharton, Martin and Davidson's divisions. Gen. Wheeler conceived the idea that great results would attain from a great raid almost all round, in fact all round the Federal army in this section of Tennessee. His idea was to destroy their supplies, cut off communication and divert their attention; while Bragg was recruiting and getting in position and in condition to again offer battle. The idea was a grand one, also a hazardous undertaking. This was the first move made as set forth in the subsequent history, and includes the time from Sept. 30th up to the siege of Knoxville, and the two engagements, I now speak of more fully, and others incidentally mentioned are included in the general reference made regarding the ninety days, and is a part of the 73 days fighting; during the months of October, November and December, 1863.

This immense body of horsemen were harder to successfully handle than the whole army under Bragg. They were inside of the lines of the enemy, and their movements were necessarily rapid, and to be effective must be moved in several detachments. Certain troops were selected for the accomplishment of certain purposes, and for that purpose the Rangers were divided, part of them going with one division and a part with another. Why, I do not know, but I believe I am correct when I say that Harrison's brigade was largely the most proficient cavalry in the army, and were divided out among the Divisions to lead, at least this is what they did. The 11th Texas was divided as was the Rangers; the 4th Tennessee was manipulated the same way, in fact they were separated from the brigade on hazardous duty for a considerable length of time, and if correct do not think they joined the brigade again until about the 12th of April 1864, and the 3rd Arkansas took again their place. In all these fights the men of this gallant brigade were put to the front.

At this period, Col. Cook, with his staff and a part of the Rangers, reported to Col. Avery, a most gallant little officer. At early day light they were in the saddle and took the front, followed by Col. Avery's regiment and two or three others, and moved from the main body toward the great East Tennessee valley, "Sequatchie." Rising the mountains, over 1,200 wagons were to be seen moving along with heavy guards. The guard were stronger than the command under Avery, but the order was to attack, and Col. Cook and Avery held a moments conversation, and the disposition of the troops was made in very quick order. No time was to be lost if a surprise was to be made, because the information of their presence must become known, as the Federal bushwhackers were thick, and would soon have up signal flags. The forage and supply train was over three miles in extent, and must be attacked simultaneous all along the line. The Rangers struck the head of their column, and the guards all along the train moved to meet the attack, but just there another part of the train was attacked, and again in a moment the rear, and their guard, after a few seconds of confusion and very slight resistance, quit the train and took to the mountains, and the whole train and fifteen hundred men surrendered; the wagons sacked and burned, except those that could be utilized, and the mules and horses sent back to the command; and finally back to the army.

Army correspondents of the period, described this as among the most brilliant affairs of the war. Col.Avery all ready had a big reputation, and he desired to sustain and increase it. But being present, and hearing the short conference between Lieut-Col. Cook and Col. Avery, I am led to award the mead of praise for the conception of the manner of the attack, and the rapidity of the movement in execution to Col. Cook--not detracting anything from Avery, and for reason, will state that Cook had a remarkable quick mind and the much greater experience, and no lack of confidence in the Rangers. At any rate, he met the brunt of the first resistance, in fact, all most all the resistance that was made--Avery was by his side. The men seemed to know just what to do, and as the enemy fled, a part pursued and other moved down the line, dismounting the teamsters while others went to the assistance of the other portion of the command, and by the time the attack was over, these 200 Rangers were along the line from one end to the other, directing the movements of both officers and men. As rapidly as possible, Col. Cook gathered them back and was ready to meet the enemy and defend the train against an attempt to recapture, and had he not done so the train would have been recaptured, as the enemy that escaped were rapidly recovering from their surprise, and the dispatch of the capturers were none too hasty, because by then the destruction was complete; Ashby was confronted by double his number, and had to move cautiously and not without resisting successfully many attacks. The value this train was said to have been $1,500,000 which we believe a small estimate--over a million was destroyed, and a half million saved, that went to the Confederacy. After this affair, the movements are remarkably precipitate and rapid, and many of the actions spoken of occurred, and the command is again at Shelbyville, Tenn., and again all together. The garrison have left, the sutler and the Yankee speculator are there and established a great trading center, and the stores are full of merchandise and the army have accumulated millions of dollars in supplies. The command enters the town and proceeds to the work of its entire destruction of this character of property. The citizens are loaded down with merchandise of every description; the command appropriates all the clothing they can carry, as well as everything eatable, loose horses are pressed and loaded down with luxuries as well as necessaries, and ammunition and all manner of improved arms. After the work is completed, the command move out and prepare and eat a royal dinner, and dress up in good clothes, and rig out the forelocks, main and tails of their horses in rich laces and costly ribbons, while they still continue to give large amounts to the women all along the rout, but they are to be soon reminded of Napoleon at Waterloo. On, on with the fun, let joy be unconfined. All at once, "to horse, to horse" is the cry, and the Rangers mount and all superfluous toggery abandoned. They strip for a fight.

The celebrated Gen. Wilder, with the best equipped body of men in the Federal army, composed of Kentuckians and Tennesseans, are about to cut the regiment off from the main command, which had passed on some hours before. The Regiment moved toward the main Lewisburg pike, and were passing very rapidly, by a woodland road, just wide enough for a farm wagon, with a cedar thicket on either side so dense as to be impenetrable, and here they are literally in a sack, with this extraordinary band of men, armed with 16 shooting small arms, and a battery of eight, 12 pound guns planted to sweep the Rangers as they turned into the pike. Cook, Christian, Claiborne, Fisher and Polk are either shot down or their horses killed. They are again mounted in a second, and the glorious men in the rear press forward and attract the enemy like savages. They fear not the great odds; man after man falls, horse after horse is shot from under them, yet they are cutting gradually their way through. How it was accomplished, no man can tell--and another unparalleled feat of prowess and of arms is accomplished that has no parallel, and the battle of Farmington is over.

This kind of things continued from day to day, as previously referred to in the following columns. There might be other fights as fully described, showing remarkable ability, but it would stretch these remarks to an interminable length. The muster roll will show the suffering in the fight at Farmington, Tenn., near near (sic) Lewisburg--Companies F and K were the heaviest losers.

Without rest, depleted ranks, and with worn out horses, these men at once began the most trying period of three months that any body of men ever onward--Washington's Valley Forge sinks into insignificance compared to it. This winter could be described in a few words--A BATTLE FROM LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, TENN., AND BACK TO DALTON, GA. We shall endeavor to cover this period in as few pages as the gravity of the occasion will admit.

There were only nine companies on this exposition, and only about 320 men, the others were on detached duty, some with Jno. A. Wharton, as body guard, some had been promoted and transferred to other commands, and 320 men carried the effective force of this grand regiment, who, two years before had over 1100 in line, and [torn] by recruits over 150. Nearly 45 percent had died or been killed, and 15 percent permanently disabled, and 1 percent in prison. The 320 men that started on this campaign had no equal on earth or ever will have. They were absolutely devoid of fear, and were most thoroughly skilled as soldiers. Every man was perfect in duty; they needed no assistance; they furnished their own clothing, horses, arms and ammunition. Each company was a corporation and engaged in business. That business was to whip everything they met in the clothes of the enemy.

I feel the hopeless incapacity to write of their deeds and suffering of this most eventful, trying campaign. I hardly know how to begin or what to say except to follow day by day, night by night, and report the cold facts as they occur. Yet, how can man refrain from going beyond and paying to them almost homage to their prowess endurance and superior skill as soldiers their action as patriots and men. We will endeavor to confine this part of the history to occurrences and let them show for themselves.

It was a most remarkable campaign. We think it proper to call this service the

NINETY DAY BATTLE

The Rangers had been selected, together with the other troops of Harrison's Texas brigade, to do the guarding of the corps of General James Longstreet, from the battle field of Chickamauga to the army of Northern Virginia. They had been in the genial, serene, tropic clime of Georgia since July. It was now October 1863. They started and with more than the usual hardships and dangers and reached and began with Longstreet the ever memorable siege of the city of Knoxville. Longstreet had invested Burnside in that city. Winter had set in unusually early and unusually severe and the late part of the month of October, winter had fastened itself firmly and bitter cold. After leaving Silver Creek, Ga., it will be remembered that the service before, during and after the battle of Chickamauga, was such that they could not carry their clothing or bedding and the wagon train was away off out of reach, so that when they started on the expedition they had very little clothing or bedding. The Confederacy was without supplies to furnish them. Their object had been to capture the Yanks and obtain their clothing and bedding, but he movements were so rapid that when a capture was made they could not transport it, as the service required made it necessary to look to the horses that could not be burdened, and then perform the duty required and absolutely necessary. The Rangers were therefore very glad to learn that the city of Knoxville, with Burnside's army corps, were to be attacked instead of being flanked. In the meantime, they were as active, if not more so, than at any other period in their existence. The cavalry force of the enemy was more than double theirs and were both offensive and defensive. It grew colder and colder, until by the middle of November it became to them intensely unbearable. Each day they hoped that the city would be stormed and the necessary clothing obtained, or that Burnside would come out and offer battle. But he refused to come out of his strong works and give the Confederates a chance to get clothing and blankets, so they had to take the weather with nearly the same amount and quality of clothing that they brought into the world in the earliest stage of their existence.

Gen. Longstreet conceived the idea that the enemy were cooped up and that they had been caught with only a few days rations at most; this, however, proved to be incorrect. The Rangers captured only a few wagons that had been out foraging as they returned. The recollection is that there were only about 60 in all taken, after the siege began Gen. Longstreet, no doubt thought that Gen. Burnside did not dream that he would attack him entrenched, as the necessity was great for Longstreet to rejoin Gen. Lee who had met reverses while Longstreet was in the South, while Gen. Longstreet, no doubt, thought that Burnside was unprepared for a siege.

The information that Gen. Longstreet had, regarding the fortification at Knoxville and the number and conditions, were all very poor; his scouts had not been as reliable as they should have been. Burnside had a Gibraltar at Knoxville that the whole of Lee's army could not have taken by a storm. None of the men who participated in the siege can ever forget it, (if they were cavalrymen), the area of territory to be guarded was very large, and the number of men to do it with was small, the duty of the Rangers was double from cause and condition, they had the Holstein and French Broad rivers to cross twice each, in twenty-four hours. The Holstein was swollen to an unusual width, and the current ran at the rate of ten or twelve miles to the hour; many of the horses were weak from poverty, and, indeed unfit for service. The horses of the Rangers were in better condition than the cavalry of some of the other commands; in fact, Harrison's whole brigade took great good care of their horses. It was one of the duties of Harrison's brigade to take the ford below the other troops, and as the poor fellows above were swept from their horses, or their horses gave away, to rescue the rider from the watery grave. (We remember to have seen private Tom Gill with an Alabamian by the hair in each hand struggling to the shore, and he successfully accomplished landing them, and put back after others.) If I am correct in my recollection, the crossing was never made but one time in daylight, always in the early morn between 5 and 6 o'clock, and at night between 10 and 11 o'clock. Night and morning, after night and morning, did these men swim those swollen streams, and before reaching the top of the banks their thin clothes were stiff with ice, while the mane, tails and long hair of the horses was a solid icicle. If the Veteran Ranger suffered, how much greater was it to those who attempted to keep pace with them, and who knew no experience in former hardships. At last the great charge was made on Star Fort, and the Confederates repulsed with a large, in fact, irreparable heavy loss, and the siege of many days is raised and abandoned, while the rigor of the winter in increased.

[NOTE.--There were notwithstanding the character of this service, very few of the Rangers who became sick the recollection is that not half a dozen left for the hospital, when ordinarily it would seem that no human being could stand it, but as age creeps on the survivor and you see his neat forms, hands drawn, rheumatism is a marked feature, and before reaching the age of 69 most all of them drop into the grave, and the germ was planted on this eventful campaign.]

Then began in greater earnest vigilance and labor that seems would be unbearable, and how accomplished, the Creator alone knows, it is beyond the power of the ken of mankind. There had been a force in front before reaching Knoxville, but there was no enemy annoying the rear, but now, the enemy was all around the army of Longstreet--Longstreet was bottled up, and the fighting was continual,--to-day the Rangers are resisting attacks in the rear, during the night they go to the front, and push the enemy back so that Longstreet can move; again they must meet and defeat a movement on the flank, then they are sent to protect a foraging train, then to capture a foraging train of the enemy. The Federals were assisted by the celebrated East Tennessee bushwhacker, of whom the Rangers had full knowledge. There were some of these men independent, and spoil was their entire object, there were, however 2,000 or 3,000 of them that were controlled--so-called--by two notorious East Tennessee renegades, one Stokes and the other fellow named Blackburn. (These men have nearly all been killed since the war by U. S. marshals for making moonshine whisky.) These detestable creatures were raised in that section, and knew the country perfectly. They were skillfully handled, night was the time to work, assassination of outpost videttes their business, when the shades of night spread over earth, it seemed as if it were a pall of the gloom of death, for well the Rangers knew that before the sun again shone the bushwhacker would send the soul of somebody's boy to the eventful bourn; skirmish, raid, skirmish, picket fight and skirmish, all day, all night, all the week, all the winter,--one continual, never-ending, never-to-be-forgotten fighting and labor.

The Rangers may live long beyond the allotted time of the life of man, but no one of them that was on duty in this eventful winter can, will, or could ever forget Sequatchie valley, Chucky Mossy Creek, Strawberry Plains and the Brick house and all the country in and about Morristown, Tennessee. The muster roll will show that it was not all labor and fighting, but the severity of the winter and hunger that was endured, and the cold forms of many of this extraordinary band of men marked the soil with their blood, and the bodies of many are wrapped in the earth, making mile posts from Knoxville to Morristown. While they were with Longstreet for only 89 days, they were engaged with the enemy 73 days of that time, i.e. they saw and met the enemy in some form, every day for 73 days.

This campaign is recalled with wonder bordering onto consternation at this day and date, for, two years before these men, from luxuriant homes away off in fair glorious Texas, uninured to the cold of winter, could not have stood the severity and exposure for the space of one week, and possibly one night would have put them on the bed of death.

Right here the author desires to give expression to an idiosyncracy that may seem to carry with it an idea of the ridiculous. The army was infested in the winter by what was known as body lice, the bite is like that of no other insect that live on human flesh or blood; it sets the body on fire, it is a fact that they do not infest the head of man; they take to the body that part that must be protected from cold, that life be preserved. It is impossible to freeze as long as the blood is kept in circulation, and there is motion to the form. We have noticed many nights, the forms of our companions while asleep, (and it is strange that the character of sleep is refreshing and resting) not a minute do they remain in perfect repose, but are continually in motion and are kept warm by these body lice companions, their bite is warm, in fact, as they crawl without attempt to feed, it is like rubbing the form to create circulation of the blood; these insects were virtually indestructible, boiling water of freezing increased rather than diminished the supply--nothing but fire seemed to destroy them. My opinion is that they were sent by Providence for the purpose, for without them the cavalry branch of the service, who were always without tents or any other absolutely necessary protection, must have frozen to death the last two winters of the awful struggle.

The fighting and labor for themselves alone would not have been so hard, but Longstreet was in comfortable quarters at Morristown, and the cavalry had them to feed, and to obtain that food long trying hazardous raids had to be made, necessitating isolation from the balance of the command, and often many miles in the rear, and sometimes right among the enemy with no support in striking distance, and the duty of protecting a train of wagons which is the meanest duty that was ever imposed on cavalry.

For all this trying duty and by way of reward, is the consolation that they have is that it was in the line of their duty to their country, and that they yet held the post of honor, and the confidence of the army and the commanders. Page after page could be filled with individual heroism during this eventful campaign. A perfect HALO OF GLORY hangs around and about the graves of the dead and the head of the living Ranger on each of them sanguinary plains. As the children of Israel were delivered out of captivity by cloud by day and a pillow (sic)of fire by night, the Rangers came out of that campaign by a deluge of blood, the shriek of bombshell and by valor unprecedented in the annals of time. Memory close ? or I fear that I shall no longer believe these men mortal!

For seventy-three days and nights these men that slept at all, had a Yankee bomb shell for a pillow, and were awakened at the point of the bayonets.

"Tis a vision of ghastly faces.
"All palled and worn with pain.
"When the splendor of manly graces.
"Shows dim thought a scarlet rain;
"In a wild and weird procession.
"They sweep by my startled eyes,
"And stem with their fates fruition.
"Seemed melting in blood red skies.

"Alas, for our heroes perished!"
"Cut down at their golden prime,
"With the luminous hopes they cherished
"On the night of their faith sublime,
"For them is the voice of wailing.
"And the sweet blush roses departs
"From the cheeks of the maiden wailing,
"O'er the wrecks of their broken hearts."

The Rangers on their scouts were more than successful in capturing the trains of the enemy, and in fact, about all the provisions obtained was taken from the enemy; it had been very annoying to the Yanks, and here is given voice to an incident, but it is not charged to the troops, yet the citizens stoutly deny that they did it, but that it was done and for the purpose there is no doubt, nor is the recollection clear as to how death of all of them was averted, but the recollection is that a woman informed the captors of the fact.

While on a scout by a part of the Rangers, near Strawberry Plains, flour and meal was noticed on the ground in the road, and on the fence rails and in a path leading to an out-house, and in the house covered up was quite a lot of flour and meal, which at once the Rangers proceeded to appropriate, and a vision of biscuits floated before their eyes once more, but the information was received that it was poisoned, but they thought it a ruse to retain the provisions, the informant said that it was put there for the purpose of poisoning the starved troops, and more especially the troublesome Rangers. A test was made, and there was enough poison in the flour and meal to have killed every man who eat any portion of it; personally, they thought it done by some Union citizens; we do not think a Federal soldier could hardly have been guilty of so miserable and so cowardly a crime, though this record will show before completion many acts that seem away beyond a crime that civilized men could be guilty of, but there has long since been flung over the affair the mantle of charity exonerating the regular army soldiers from the crime.

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