As I posted recently, I unexpectedly found information significant to my research, specifically stories about the 23rd Kentucky Infantry, in which almost 180 Campbell County men had enlisted. I learned about its role in the Battle of Pickett’s Mill, Georgia on May 27, 1864, thanks to the second part of David Powell’s Atlanta Campaign series. I also realized that Ambrose Bierce had been with William Hazen's brigade that included the 23rd Kentucky and that his essay, The Crime at Pickett's Mill, discussed action and reactions that the men of the 23rd had seen and experienced that day.
In this post, I examine Bierce's observations along with two 1890s accounts of this fight from officers in the 23rd, stories I only found by reading that book. These stories help me better understand what the Campbell County men in the regiment experienced and witnessed as they offer more battlefield specifics of the unit’s service than I have seen elsewhere. (A review of my records indicates that 64 Campbell County men remained in the unit by this point in the war. Two men were assigned to the 5th Kentucky, who was also in Hazen's brigade at the time, and one was a clerk at brigade headquarters. One was working as a division wagoner and three were on duty with the pioneer /engineering corps, while one more was in the ambulance corps. One man was serving as a regimental quartermaster. Records for others do not show definitively if the men were still with the regiment at the time, so the exact number who actually carried rifles into the fight is uncertain.
I also came across a pair of postwar books that add context to this story.
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On December 17, 1896, 1st Lieutenant Arnold Bradley, who had served in company C of the 23rd, published his recollections of Pickett's Mill in the National Tribune. Much of what he describes is likely similar to what the Campbell County men (a few in company C, but most in companies B, D, E, F, G, and I) saw and experienced.
On May 27, 1864, the 23rd marched towards the enemy. Bradley noted that companies in other nearby regiments used a bugler to signal to the men which way to go, his instrument creating "a perfect din of sounds.”
They marched through the woods, “over brush and logs until about 4 o’clock in the evening, when, crossing a small creek, we halted. A few scattering shots came from the front.”
Unfortunately, this movement did not surprise the enemy, as the Rebels were “informed by our bugles the direction we had taken.”
Along the way, Bradley found an opportunity to fill his canteen with water, a much-valued commodity: “All soldiers looked out for that necessary article before going into battle.”
As he did so, Generals Oliver Howard and William Hazen passed closely by, speaking to each other. The nosy lieutenant eavesdropped and heard Howard tell his subordinate, “General, you will have to charge and storm the enemy’s flank, if you sacrifice your brigade.”
Being part of that brigade, Bradley was naturally alarmed by this and rushed to his fellow sergeants in the company to report the intelligence he had gathered. Their orders soon came - “Fix bayonets! Charge bayonets! Forward - Double-quick - March!”
Bierce sheds light on the mindset of these men at this moment as they headed towards combat. "It is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anything about the disposition of the enemy’s forces—except that it is unaimable—or precisely whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, they can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass." They were simply obeying orders, marching toward whatever destiny awaited them.
In general, the author noted, "a soldier’s knowledge of what is going on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all until he learns it afterward."
Bradley's report continued. “Away we went through the timber, up a hill, over a fence to an open field, down to a ravine, up another hill to another fence.”
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| National Tribune Dec. 17, 1896 |
A bullet struck Bradley. Soon another slammed against his gun, rendering it inoperable, but saving his life. He did what became routine for soldiers during the war: “I picked up a dead comrade’s gun” and kept firing.
The fight took its toll. “Our line was considerably thinned by this time.” Bradley noticed that he and his colleagues were on the extreme left of the Union line, their flank dangerously at risk of Confederate attack. He did observe other Unionists on the field, but “so far in our rear that they were no protection.”
Bradley and two others followed advice they had heard General Howard give: “Take good aim, and be sure you do good execution.”
The 23rd Kentucky neared the enemy. The Rebels placed rocks and other obstacles in and around the fence, hoping they would provide some protection, but initially did not seem to notice the bluecoats nearing them.
They did not remain oblivious much longer. Their men were not “showing their heads any longer,” so, Bradley wrote, “we made up a squad and charged.” Here, Bradley “saw enough there to make my blood run cold; plenty of dead men, with a very lively line behind them. We hastily fired into them and hastily retreated; not before they shot the most of our squad.”
The Rebels offered their own attack: “Some of them got over the fence and were making their way under the brow of the hill we occupied, so as to gain our rear.”
Bradley now “notified Capt. Tifft (Claudius Tifft, a resident of Newport, Campbell County and the captain of company H) of our danger, he being occupied in encouraging what few men were left. He went with me to the left, and very cooly focused a pair of fieldglasses to his eyes, with which he overlooked the crawling rebels.”
"’Lower your glasses Captain; don't you see them, not 25 feet from you?’ I said.”
“Before he got the range with the glasses they fired at us. One of the balls penetrated the Captain's knee. It made him spin around on one leg, but failed to down him. The wounded man showed an unusual amount of nerve and grit. He replaced the glasses.”
"Can I help you? I asked.”
"No; go tell Lieut. Whiting to take charge of the company."
“That day ended the Captain's military campaigns. He crawled away from the enemy and made his escape. We never net again until 31 years after, when I had the pleasure of shaking his hand at Capt. Wm. Mundy's office, Louisville, Ky. I was so overcome with feeling that I was unable to speak to him for minutes. He was blind. Kind relatives had assisted him all the way from Sanborn, Iowa, to the State he once so nobly defended and represent in the struggles.”
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| Claudius Tifft late in life from ancestry.com |
The contest did not grow any easier. “Our ammunition supply was about exhausted. We had already emptied our own and the dead comrades' cartridge boxes.”
A panic ensued as someone nearby yelling at others to retreat. “The command was repeated by those having authority. Most of our regimental survivors rallied around our colors in the hands of Serg's Henry. He leisurely rolled up the flag around the pole, after which we started."
(Bierce's account contradicted this version: “No command to fall back was given, none could have been heard. Man by man, the survivors withdrew at will, sifting through the trees into the cover of the ravines, among the wounded who could drag themselves back; among the skulkers whom nothing could have dragged forward.” Perhaps Bradley’s proximity to his fellow soldiers enabled him to hear something Bierce could not. Another thought is that maybe one of them misremembered such a detail.)
Bradley continued: “There were hardly enough able-bodied men left in the regiment to look after the wounded,” who were near the creek where Bradley had gathered water earlier. “Our troubles had not yet ended for that day. The enemy commenced shelling our wounded. Several shells exploded right among them.”
“Darkness soon after spread her black wings over the mournful sight of wounded and dying soldiers.”
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| From https://civilwartalk.com/threads/picketts-mill.195452/ |
Another perspective of this fight comes from the memory of Sergeant Gregory McDermott, who published his story in the National Tribune of October 28, 1897, less than a year after Bradley’s account. Perhaps reading that one inspired him to record his own observations for posterity.
Sergeant McDermott was in the 23rd’s company I, which originally included 16 of the Campbell Countians I’m studying, at least before attrition took its toll. It appears that 8 of the county's men were still with the company, but one was under arrest at the time and another was with the engineering/pioneer corps.)
He described how the 23rd moved forward on May 25th to connect with General Joseph Hooker’s XX Corps. They were too far behind to reach their colleagues that night, so they "camped where we were, in the mud and slush."
The next day, they continued to advance, their skirmishers leading the way. "We arrived in front of a large open field" where these veterans quickly noticed that "the Johnnies had already a strong line of earthworks." McDermott and his fellow soldiers quickly began "digging some for our own protection," finishing their own strong position by nightfall.
As they awoke the next morning, May 27th, they did not immediately see combat, and were, instead, "enjoying ourselves the best we knew how,” probably eating breakfast and perhaps reading or writing letters to or from home.
This tranquility ended soon enough. Generals William T. Sherman, Oliver O. Howard (commander of the XIV corps, including the 23rd Kentucky), David Stanley, and Thomas Wood (commander of that corps third division and the 23rd Kentucky) arrived in camp to take a peek at the enemy's works and determine how to proceed.
"It wasn't long before we were ordered to fall in." They did so and moved towards their left, but it was not easy. "The country we were passing over was wild. The underbrush was very thick. Nothing could be seen ahead. It was like groping in the darkness," a more detailed version that agreed with Bradley's.
McDermott noted one other issue that Bradley had also observed. A nearby bugler sounded his horn as a guide, but it was not necessarily a welcome one. "We objected to it on account of it attracting the Johnnies’ shells so often, for every now and then one would burst over head, breaking the branches of the trees and causing a scattering.”
They struggled through the brush, dodging enemy missiles and tramping onward for four miles before halting, at which point skirmishing began with "our boys driving straight ahead; then we moved forward in line-of-battle down through the woods.”
The intensity of the gunfire picked up, then "came a hurrah, and away we went," headed directly to their awaiting foe until coming "to a rail fence down in a hollow at the edge of a clearing of about 15 acres." After a brief pause, they climbed the fence and crossed into the clearing from where they charged "up a slight rise, into a hollow, up the hill to the top.”
The Rebels stopped behind another fence on the opposite side of the field while the attackers kept up their approach until arriving at the same barrier. Crossbars in the fence slowed the Confederate men from crossing it to attack the Yankees. McDermott and his colleagues then "drove them into the woods."
Nearby high ground provided the Confederates an effective position for their line, and they took advantage of it by "firing from that bluff at us on our left and did a great deal of damage to our front and our right."
The 23rd returned fire as long as they could but soon had used up all its ammunition and found it necessary to fall back as no help from other Union brigades had arrived and the Rebels were "giving it to us on all sides."
The regiment retreated to the other end of the field where the men assumed a prone position, but to no avail. "A lot of the boys were killed and wounded in the clearing and close to the fence.” How many Campbell County soldiers were among this group?
Sergeant McDermott then described his own wounding and the aid he received, including from a fellow member of the regiment who found him and carried him on his back until the enemy came too close and the good Samaritan had to put him down for both men’s safety.
He asserted that the men of Wood's division had been “hurled into that slaughter-pen” and that Hazen’s brigade was “almost destroyed." after Hazen had heard his division commander Wood inform Howard:
Bierce detailed a specific incident he had witnessed as the fighting wound down, this one involving the 23rd, which was on the left of Hazen's line. "The left of our short line had fought at the corner of a cornfield, the fence along the right side of which was parallel to the direction of our retreat. As the disorganized groups fell back along this fence on the wooded side, they were attacked by a flanking force of the enemy moving through the field in a direction nearly parallel with what had been our front. This force, I infer from General Johnston’s account, consisted of the brigade of General Lowry, or two Arkansas regiments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent by General Hazen to that point and arrived in time to witness this formidable movement. But already our retreating men, in obedience to their officers, their courage and their instinct of self-preservation, had formed along the fence and opened fire. The apparently slight advantage of the imperfect cover and the open range worked its customary miracle: the assault, a singularly spiritless one, considering the advantages it promised and that it was made by an organized and victorious force against a broken and retreating one, was checked."
Hazen reported his brigade had been “withdrawn for this attack from a position in the line where for forty-eight hours it had been very actively engaged. Many felt that this imposed on us an additional service of very great severity out of our turn. General Wood's report shows that he protested stubbornly. In a conversation with General Howard, our corps commander, when we were given the advance, he said to me that he had selected the force he thought gave the greatest promise of succeeding in the work in hand. Hazen had also heard Wood tell Howard: “We will put in Hazen and see what success he has.” (Hazen p. 256)
This proved to be a difficult and deadly fight for these soldiers, one forever ingrained in their minds, but did their superiors understand or appreciate their struggles?
Robert Kimberly, a resident of Dayton, Campbell County in the postwar years, served as a Lieutenant Colonel and brevet Brigadier General of the 41st Ohio Infantry. While living in Dayton, he co-authored a history of his regiment. Like the 23rd, the 41st had been in Hazen’s Brigade at Pickett’s Mill, though on the right side of the Union line while the 23rd was on the left. In addition to his specific comments about the 41st’s experiences he wrote: “It is a fact worth notice, that while the Confederate reports of the Atlanta campaign minutely record the Pickett's Mill battle as one of the most prominent and important events of the campaign, Gen. Sherman's memoirs wholly ignore the action.” (Kimberly p. 87)
Another theory is that Sherman was embarrassed by this defeat and simply denied it happened.
Hazen, however, knew and acknowledged what his men had face, calling Pickett's Mill "the most fierce, bloody and persistent assault of the Atlanta campaign." (Hazen p. 256)
The Campbell County men were not immune to the fates of war, of course. Two died here, while seven others were wounded and three more captured. The two fatalities, George H. Morgan of company D and Jerry Rose of company E, both have headstones in Marietta National Cemetery, so their remains were identified.
This fight, though relatively small and not greatly known did matter. It had “delayed Sherman’s progress; when his forces emerged from the wilderness, they were no closer to Atlanta than they had been almost two weeks earlier. The real significance of the battle was that it marked the beginning of trench warfare.”
The details on what the soldiers of the 23rd Kentucky witnessed and the challenges they faced in this battle are unlike anything else I have found; they fascinate me.
Knowing these men fought in several deadly battles and knowing specifics of what they experienced therein are two different matters. Obviously, other contests differed from this one, but this does provide an example of their wartime adventures. It is far more than I had seen before.
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(I must add the usual disclaimer that these (except Bierce's account) were written more than 30 years after the battle, so it is reasonable to wonder about the accuracy of all the details, but the overall stories are likely at least reasonable versions of what happened on that ground on May 27, 1864. Kimberly and/or Hazen may have still had copies of period reports that added accuracy to their writings. Perhaps Bradley and/or McDermott had kept a wartime journal.)
Books cited:
Kimbery, Robert L. and Holloway, Ephraim S. The Forty-First Ohio Veteran Volunter Infantry in the War of the Rebellion 1861 - 1865. 1897 W.R. Smellie, Printer and Publisher. Cleveland, Ohio
Hazen, William Babcock. A Narrative of Military Service 1885 Ticknor and Company, Boston
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