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.