CHAPTER I.

ORGANIZATION AND EARLY MOVEMENTS.

The Fourth Tennessee Cavalry did not assume regimental form until General Bragg had returned from his Kentucky campaign, in the fall of 1862. It was made up of detachments that had served under different commanders since the beginning of the war. At its organization Baxter Smith was made Colonel; Paul F. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel; W. Scott Bledsoe, Major; J. A. Minnis, Adjutant; W. A. Rushing, Sergeant Major; Marcellus Grissim, Quartermaster, with R. O. McLean, Bob Corder, and John Price his assistants; Captain Bone, Commissary, with Lieut. J. A. Arnold and Captain McLean his assistants; Dr. W. T. Delaney, Surgeon, with Dr. Tom Allen his assistant; Rev. W. W. Hendrix, Chaplain; Sergeant Finney, Ordnance Officer; J. A. Stewart and James B. Nance, Regimental Buglers; Bob Gann and Bennett Chapman, Wagon Masters.

The commissioned officers of the companies were:

_Company A._--Captain, D. W. Alexander; First Lieutenant, Rice McLean; Second Lieutenant, J. N. Orr; Third Lieutenant, Charles Beard. Recruited in Marshall County, Tenn.

_Company B._--Captain, C. H. Ingles; First Lieutenant, Joe Massengale; Second Lieutenant, Joe Massengale; Third Lieutenant, G. W. Carmack. Recruited in Sullivan County, Tenn.

_Company C._--Captains, Frank Cunningham[1] and George C. Moore; First Lieutenant, James Hogan; Second Lieutenant, R. S. Scruggs; Third Lieutenant, Samuel Scoggins. Recruited in Smith County, Tenn.

_Company D._--Captain, J. M. Phillips; First Lieutenant, Bob Bone; Second Lieutenant, J. T. Barbee; Third Lieutenant, J. A. Arnold. Recruited in DeKalb and Wilson Counties, Tenn.

_Company E._--Captain, H. A. Wyly; First Lieutenant, H. L. Preston; Second Lieutenant, W. S. Sullivan; Third Lieutenant, John Fathera. Recruited in Cannon County, Tenn.

_Company F._--Captain, J. R. Lester; First Lieutenant, C. S. Burgess; Second Lieutenant, W. H. Phillips; Third Lieutenant, James Williamson. Recruited in Wilson County, Tenn.

_Company G._--Captain, J. W. Nichol; First Lieutenant, Dave Youree; Second Lieutenant,--McKnight; Third Lieutenant, J. A. Sagely. Recruited in Cannon and Rutherford Counties, Tenn.

_Company H._--Captain, Sam Glover; Lieutenants, Green, Light, William Gaut, and William Fields. Recruited in Hamilton County and Bridgeport, Ala.

_Company I._--Captain, Bob Bledsoe; Lieutenants, William Hildreth, J. W. Storey, Foster Bowman, and Elliott. Recruited in Fentress County, Tenn.

_Company K._--Captain, Jim Britton; Lieutenants, W. Corbett and Dewitt Anderson. Recruited in Wilson, Sumner, and Davidson Counties, Tenn.

_Company L._[2]--Captain, J. J. Parton; Lieutenants, Henry, Russell, and Tillery. Recruited in Knox County, Tenn.

The Regiment was assigned to a brigade composed of the Eighth Texas, Eleventh Texas, First Kentucky, and Fourth Tennessee Regiments and Malone’s Alabama Battalion, Col. Tom Harrison as Senior Colonel commanding the brigade, Maj. Gen. John A. Wharton commanding the division (Gen. Joe Wheeler’s Corps, Army of Tennessee), and sent to Franklin, Tenn., on outpost duty. General Bragg, with the infantry force, was at Murfreesboro, confronting General Rosecrans’s Federal army at Nashville.

It is well enough to state here that there were two Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiments in the army--Colonel Stearns’s Fourth Tennessee and Colonel Smith’s Fourth Tennessee. They had been serving in different departments of the army, one under General Forrest and the other under General Wheeler, most of the time, and we did not know the fact until late in the war. Both had made character under that name, and each tacitly agreed to remain as they had been known, which they did. At the date of the organization of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment it numbered one thousand men, rank and file, made up principally of stout, healthy, and vigorous young men. As stated, our first service as a regiment was at Franklin, on General Bragg’s front and left flank, some twenty miles from Murfreesboro and eighteen miles from Nashville, where we were kept busy for some two months or more in picketing, scouting on all the roads leading toward Murfreesboro from Nashville, occasionally having some hot contests with the enemy, killing, wounding, and capturing some, and losing some ourselves. At one time we scouted toward Nashville in the night, and remained all day in the vicinity, expecting the enemy to come out, as was their custom, on foraging expeditions, which they failed to do. But before leaving we concluded to give them a closer dare. In the evening we came up the Charlotte Pike as far as what is now West Nashville, and, going up Richland Creek, we came in contact with a force of the enemy at Bosley Springs, and, charging them, drove them back to the Harding Pike, capturing some and pursuing the others to where the old penitentiary wall stood, on Church Street. We remained in line a short distance down the road till near sundown; but no enemy appearing, we repaired to our station at Franklin.

The enemy made frequent scouts in the neighborhood of Franklin, sometimes resulting in quite a battle. I remember that in one of these Captain McMillin, a brother of Ex-Governor McMillin, was killed. He was on a visit to some acquaintances in the Regiment, and went out with the Regiment to meet one of these scouts of the enemy.

In the latter part of December, 1862, Rosecrans marched on Murfreesboro. The Regiment skirmished with his advance till he reached the place. Capt. J. R. Lester, of Company F, was desperately wounded in one of these skirmishes. We thought at the time that his wound was mortal, but he returned to his company in a few weeks, and served with them till the surrender at Greensboro, N. C. When Colonel Smith as Senior Colonel assumed the command of the brigade, Capt. J. R. Lester was made his Inspector General, and surrendered as such.

On reaching Murfreesboro we were placed on the right of our line on the Lebanon Pike, where General Bragg supposed the enemy would first attack; but changing his plans during the night, he attacked with his left flank about daylight. A terrific battle ensued here. It seems the enemy at the time was moving to attack Bragg from that flank, and the two armies unexpectedly met in deadly conflict. The battle raged in all its fury for hours. Charge after charge and countercharge was made time and again, with heavy losses on both sides. The Confederates, steadily advancing, gradually forced the enemy back, capturing many pieces of artillery and small arms, with many prisoners. Among the captured was General Willich and his German Brigade. Gen. Jim Rains, of the Confederate army, and General Sill, of the Federal army, were killed in one of these assaults. Before night the Federal army was forced back to the Nashville Pike, at right angles to the position they held when first attacked. The Confederates had gained a great victory. The loss of each was about equal--say, ten thousand. Six thousand Federal prisoners were captured, and several batteries of artillery, besides thousands of muskets and ammunition. The next morning every one expected the battle to be renewed, and were much disappointed that General Bragg did not follow up his advantage, instead of which he remained inactive for several days. In the meantime he ordered General Wheeler, with his cavalry corps, to the rear of General Rosecrans, toward Nashville. All along the way to La Vergne we were picking up prisoners, and everything indicated a defeat and rout of the enemy. At the latter place we came up with a long train of wagons moving toward Nashville with an escort of several thousand cavalry. We engaged them, and, after a considerable battle, they retreated. We captured and destroyed some two hundred wagons, some prisoners were taken, and a good many men on both sides were killed and wounded. Many of Rosecrans’s men had reached Nashville, reporting that his army had been badly beaten. Still no movement had been made by General Bragg at Murfreesboro. The enemy had taken advantage of this inactivity by collecting together their broken columns and taking position on high ground on the banks of Stones River, and crowned it with a number of batteries--fifty-seven pieces--well protected, awaiting the movement of General Bragg. On the first day of January he attacked this well-fortified place of the enemy with the single division of General Breckenridge. After a most gallant assault by Breckenridge, he was repulsed with heavy loss. That night the cavalry of Wheeler occupied the works of the infantry when they withdrew toward Shelbyville. General Bragg, it seems, had sent off during this lull in movements all of his wounded and the prisoners he had taken. At daylight on the 2d of January, 1863, Wheeler’s cavalry also withdrew, following the infantry toward Shelbyville. No pursuit was made. The Federals were as much surprised as the Confederates at the result, and it was sometime during the day before they could realize the fact of the withdrawal of Bragg’s troops. Much adverse criticism was made of General Bragg’s failure to take advantage of the victory he had obtained in the first days of the battle, and especially of the assault he made against the well-prepared works of the enemy, when it should have been with his entire army instead of a single division. Such was the opinion of the humblest soldier in his army.