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1 It was the greatest war in American history. Three million fought – over 600,000 died. It was the only war fought on American soil by Americans. The Civil War, between the northern and southern sections of the United States, which began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on the 12th of April 1861, and came to an end, in the last days of April 1865, at Appomattox, with the surrender of the Confederates, was one of the greatest struggles known to history. Its field of operation spread over thousands of miles, and not only were the number of men deployed in the warfare vast so too were the numbers of battles, with some two thousand four hundred recorded. It stood on the border between old and modern warfare. “More that 150,000 Irishmen served in the US army, most notably with the Irish Brigade, and some 50,000 more worn the grey of the Confederacy. During the American Civil War, six grandsons of George McCook, a United Irishmen, were Union Generals and another six were field officers. Irish-born Meagher, Corcoran and Shields were Union Generals and for the Confederacy, Corkman Patrick Cleburne was one of their finest commanders.” 1. Some 1,008 officers, on both sides, were appointed to the various ranks of general during the Civil War, of these there were 425 Confederate generals and 583 Union generals. Patrick Ronanye Cleburne would rise to the rank of major general and thus become the highest ranking Irishman on both sides as well as the highest ranking officer of foreign birth in the Civil War. Fighting on the Western front Cleburne would achieve less glory and recognition than other Confederate generals, despite this he would become the most respected of all Confederate generals, after Robert E. Lee, and would earn the accolade “Stonewall of the West” from Jefferson Davis. 2 Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was born on 16th March 1828 in Ovens, Co Cork. He was the second son of Dr Joseph and Mary Ann Ronanye Cleburne and was named after his maternal grandfather, Patrick Ronayne. The Ronayne heritage in Cork and Waterford dated back to before the Norman invasion while the Cleburne’s had arrived in Ireland during the early 1600’s. William Cleburne bought land in Tipperary, in the early 1600’s, where the Cleburne family estate would remain until the death of William Cleburne, Patrick’s grandfather, in 1833. Joseph Cleburne was born in Rock Cottage, Co. Tipperary, in 1792, the son of William Cleburne. While still a very young physician Joseph moved to Ovens, near Ballincollig, and here he met and married Mary Anne Ronanye the daughter of Patrick Ronanye of Great Island, Cobh. Dr Cleburne became the contract surgeon for the army barracks and Royal Gunpowder Mill at Ballincollig as well as the local physician. When he was a year old Patrick’s mother died, but his father remarried soon after to a Miss Stuart. Patrick was to gain not only a mother’s love but soon another four siblings – one of whom, Christopher, was to fall at the battle of Cloyd’s Farm, West Virginia, on 10th of May 1864 aged only 21. Educated at home, by a tutor, until the age of twelve Patrick was then sent to a private school which was run by the Reverend Spedden of the Church of Ireland ( the Cleburne’s themselves were of Quaker stock ). When Patrick’s father died in 1844 Patrick became apprentice assistant surgeon to Mr Justin a physician in Mallow a neighbouring town. Having failed to pass an entrance exam to enter Trinity College, in February 1846, a disheartened Patrick immediately joined the 41st Regiment (Welch) of Infantry, which 3 was stationed in the Royal Barracks, at Ship Street in Dublin having just returned from a tour of India. Omitting to mention that he had several relatives who were surgeons in the British Army or that he was from the landowning class, Pat signed up for life and found himself #2242 Private Cleburne. Stationed, not as he had hoped in India, or some other far flung post of the Empire, but in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, and with Ireland in the harsh grip of the Potato Famine the regiment would be seconded to aid the civil powers to quell the riots and civil disorder that wracked the country. Finding himself in the ranks of what was nothing but an occupying army, as the potato famine worsened, and with the daily routine of army life proving monotonous, Patrick wearied of the whole experience, and so with part of his inheritance, he purchased his discharge, in September 1849, for the princely sum of £20. This was not before Patrick had been demoted from the rank of corporal, to which he had been promoted in July 1849, a rank he held only for a very short while, for one day having been ordered out on yet another drill he had filled his knapsack with pillows. Hours later he would be horrified to hear the order “inspection knapsacks” and the pillows being found he was once more a private. After nearly three and a half years in the army Patrick along with his brothers, Christopher and William, and sister, Anne, set sail on the vessel Bridgetown arriving in New Orleans on Christmas Eve of 1849. 4 Irish immigration into America began as early as the seventeenth century and by 1720 it could have been deemed a mass emigration with some 150,000 to 200,000 Irish, mainly young Catholic men, having arrived. Most, being rootless and single, would swiftly be absorbed into the American way of life with no separate ethnic group being established during this early period. The first big wave of Ulster Scot emigration was in the period of 1717 to 1719. “Between 1717 and 1775 alone, an estimated 250,000 Ulster Scots left Ireland for the American colonies.”2. Unlike previous emigrants to America, from Ireland, these were not single young men but rather families and even whole settlements. America offered the Ulster Scot Presbyterian much, but most especially it offered the promise of economic and religious freedoms. While these Ulster Presbyterians had suffered religious persecution this factor alone did not push them into emigrating. What was the determining factor was the level of poverty these men and women lived under. In the early eighteenth century extremely bad weather conditions had seen the failure of all types of crops and famine was rife. By the late eighteenth century the decline in the linen industry meant hardship for most in Ulster, affecting as it did almost every person from tenant farmer to those working in the mills. Most Presbyterians worked the land, renting this from landowners as under the Penal Laws they were barred from owning land. The amount of land that these farmers could rent was minute as rents were high and profitability low, so farmers from the same family group or even the same church group would amalgamate their land farming it in one large unit which was certainly more viable but still they just eked out a living. Thus it was that the lure of land and of religious freedom drew the Presbyterians of Ulster to America, seeing whole families and even whole communities leaving together. Arriving in Boston they soon became known as 5 Scots-Irish and found that their strict brand of Protestantism wasn’t popular with the Puritans. “The Scots-Irish quickly became almost as unpopular among New Englanders as their Catholic counterparts would be in the nineteenth century. The principal sources of conflict were religion and the manners, lifestyle and frequent poverty of the newcomers.”3. Unwelcome they moved on with Pennsylvania becoming a centre for settlement but it was the South and the more remote backcountry areas of Kentucky and Tennessee that would see the majority of Scots-Irish settlement, the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains regions. Wherever the Scots-Irish settled they would quickly distance themselves from less respectable Irishmen and by the early nineteenth century were being accepted as American, this often due to the role they had played in the American Revolution where they had sided with the Americans against the British. “While Irish emigrants to America in the eighteenth century had been mainly Protestant, the emigrants of the nineteenth century were overwhelmingly Catholic. By the 1830’s, Catholics exceeded Protestants in the transatlantic migration from Ireland for the first time since 1700. As mass emigration from Catholic Ireland got underway in the prefamine era (1800-44), Irish Americans of Protestant descent loudly proclaimed their difference from the newcomers, calling themselves Scotch-Irish rather than Irish and assimilating rapidly into the mainstream of Protestant America.4. Even before the stream of Catholic Irish emigration to America became a torrent, the issue of religion had come to the forefront in American politics. The Aliens Act of 1798 had attempted to curtail the rights of immigrants who were not naturalised. In the 1830s, however, nativists began focusing their attacks on Catholic immigrants, asserting that 6 America's republican form of government could not be sustained with a large Catholic population. Pamphleteers, such as Samuel Morse, began linking immigration with Catholicism outweighing the benefits of immigration with the potential threat to Protestantism by Catholicism. Nativists began to transform this anti-immigrant, antiCatholic sentiment into a political movement and the Know-Nothings soon became the largest of such movements. The dramatic rise in immigration, resulting from the Irish potato famine and German economic distress, disputes between Protestants and Catholics over the use of the Protestant King James Bible in public schools, attracted more than 1 million members to the Know-Nothing party. Changing their name in 1855, to the American Party, they would have by the end of that year carried elections in a dozen states and elected more than one hundred congressmen. Many believed they would elect the next president, but their 1856 presidential candidate, Millard Fillmore, carried only Maryland. This embarrassing performance hastened the party's decline, and by 1860, the Know-Nothings had disappeared. Divisions over the slavery issue drove many of its northern members into the new Republican Party. The population explosion in Ireland during the late eighteenth century had put immense pressure on its food resources. By the time of the Great Famine (1845 -1851) the poor were finding life extremely difficult and with their crop turning black, from the blight, rents would soon become unpaid. The exodus to America would start late in 1845. “Choosing between starvation and flight, the famine Irish emigrated to North America in their hundreds of thousands. The two million men, women and children who crossed the Atlantic from Ireland in the decade after 1845 represented one-quarter of the pre-famine 7 population and accounted for the largest European mass migration, in proportion terms, in nineteenth century history.”5. These new immigrants, unlike the farming Scots-Irish, would stay mainly in the cities and towns. Even in the non-industrialised South the newly arrived Irish tended to stay in urban areas. In this famine era the new immigrants gained a reputation for violence and criminality, the latter often caused by the poverty which they found themselves in. During this period the Irish consolidated their control of the Catholic Church an action that made them even more disliked and mistrusted. 8 It was into this era, in America, of dislike and mistrust of the Irish immigrant that Patrick Cleburne and the Cleburne family would arrive. However, unlike others who were fleeing famine Ireland, the Cleburnes were relatively well off as the family had been left in a fairly sound financial position when their father died and possessed a degree of learning, something that most of the newly arrived Irish didn’t. Also their religion set them apart. Being relatively well off, educated and Protestant the Cleburnes, while not received with open arms, were very quickly accepted. The Cleburne family set out for Ohio, but after only a short time there Patrick grew restless and headed south west finally settling, in 1850, in Helena, Arkansas, a swampy Mississippi River town just below Memphis. The Helena that Patrick arrived at in 1849 was a thriving community of some 1700 souls, of whom 75 were Irish. “Arkansas was still a rather new state in 1849 when he got there. A large percentage of Arkansas's people had ties to Ireland/Scotland in ancestry.”6. Saying this “here a man was not so much judged by his ancestral beginnings (with exception of the slaves at that time) as he was by what he stood for and represented”7. Patrick would very soon be assimilated into the society of Helena being recognised for the gentleman he was. Patrick obtained a position with Grant and Nash, as a prescription clerk, and was so successful that after a mere two years he bought out Mr Grant’s share of the business. He so immersed himself into life in his adopted home that he began to join local groups and organisations such as the Freemasons (Lafayette #16), which he joined in 1852. "He was particularly committed, never missed a meeting, and quickly became a leader in the local lodge. He was elected master in early 1853, and later that year he 'took the sublime 9 degree of Royal Arch Mason' conferred upon him at a special ceremony by Arkansas luminary Albert Pike." He was also elected in 1853 to deliver the keynote speech at an annual convention of Arkansas and Mississippi freemasons, where, "In a forceful and direct style, he offered a talk dominated by high-minded platitudes about the principles of the Masonic order, 'Brotherly love, friendship, charity, and truth'..." 8. Being extremely religious Patrick was also a frequent and regular attendee at his local Presbyterian church. Patrick’s religious observance, and overall sober demeanour (he was a member of the Sons of Temperance, and as well he was never known to utter a profanity), meant that he quickly became accepted, as well as assimilated, into Southern society, unlike the Irish Catholics. Selling out his share of the drugstore, in April 1854, Patrick used the money to embark on the study of law, after qualifying, in 1856, he joined the practise of Scaife and Magnum. Patrick had become a naturalised citizen, in February 1855. Patrick had developed a strong interest in politics, during his time in America, involving himself so deeply as to be wounded by a member of the Know-Nothings, once described by Thomas C. Hindman as “pestilent fanatics”. Soon Hindman, a Tennessee lawyer now living in Helena, and Cleburne would become close friends and it was with Hindman that Patrick became involved in a street fight with members of the Know-Nothings, in 1856, both being wounded, Patrick so badly he almost died, but not before he managed to kill their attacker. Later in that year Patrick would become Hindman’s best man when Thomas Hindman and Mary Watkins Biscoe wed. By 1860 Patrick had become senior partner in the law firm which was by now called Cleburne, Scaife and Magnum. And it was in the summer of 1860 that he enlisted in the local militia group the Yell Rifles, the 10 members of which came from the cream of local society. Starting as a private Patrick would soon be elected by his fellow militiamen to the rank of captain. This was no doubt due in part to his time spent in the British army and also partly due to the magnetism of his personality, for Patrick, despite his ignorance of the social mores of the ante-bellum South, was well liked and respected. 11 On Tuesday, November 6th 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States of America, with just a third of the popular vote, and on the 20th December 1860, before Lincoln was even sworn in, South Carolina seceded from the Union. They would be followed in January 1861 by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, Texas would follow suit on February 1st. On 12th April 1861 with the firing on of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour the Civil War broke out. According to these states the decision to secede was based on states rights, in that having joined the Union voluntarily they had the right to withdrawn from it. President Buchanan had said that neither he nor Congress had the power to prevent a state from leaving the Union and so did nothing to prevent the rebel states from breaking away. However, when Lincoln was finally sworn in, on March 4th, he declared that no state had the legal right to withdraw from the Union, (Appendix I, Lincoln’s inauguration speech). Likening the Union to a marriage he said that while a couple may divorce and go out of the presence of each other, the different parts of the country could not do this, they could not physically separate. In the 120 days between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration the Confederates tried to impose sovereignty over those forts that remained in the hands of the Southern states. Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbour, and Fort Pickens, at Pensacola, Florida, along with two other forts remained in federal hands with the South putting increasing military pressure on them to hand over the forts. When the Union tried to resupply and reinforce Fort Sumter on January 9, 1861 the vessel Star of the West was fired upon and forced to turn back. The Union forces remained firm despite the fact that the Confederates held a 12 tight noose, figuratively, around the man made island holding as they did forts Johnson, Moultrie and Castle Pinckney. Public attention was swiftly drawn to the situation at Sumter, and it rapidly became a symbol of sovereignty and honour. Edmund Ruffin fired the first shot of the conflict at 4.30am on the morning of April 12th, thus the siege of Fort Sumter began. While public attention focused on the shelling of Fort Sumter and the outbreak of Civil War United States troops were landed at Pickens. The fort was secured, thereby offsetting the loss of the other naval fortifications at Pensacola Harbour. Fort Pickens and the surrounding island remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War. In strictly military terms, the battle between Union and Confederate forces at Fort Sumter scarcely merits attention. After a relatively brief bombardment, the small Union garrison surrendered a position of questionable military value to either side. Not a single human life was lost during the fighting at Fort Sumter, but it would unleash four years of bloodshed. The precarious peace that had existed after the secession of the seven deep South states, and the formation of the Confederacy, was irredeemably shattered. Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17th to be followed in May by Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. In Arkansas, in late January and early February of 1861, while a convention had not been held and thus Arkansas had not seceded from the Union, its citizens were fired up. The election of Lincoln as President had sent the state into turmoil and everyone was restless so when a steamship tied up at the jetty at Little Rock, in December 1860, and some 76 Federal soldiers came ashore and headed towards the towns arsenal it was no wonder that the people of Arkansas were wary. The arsenal was 13 after years of minimal occupancy again active. Then in February rumour had it that a steamboat was headed for Little Rock with further Federal soldiers. Governor Rector ordered cannons be placed at the river to repel the reinforcements but they were later withdrawn when the soldiers did not materialise. Before this, however, the newly strung telegraph wires were abuzz with the message that more Federal troops were expected in Little Rock, one of the lines ran through to Helena where it was decided that the arsenal in little Rock had to be neutralised. “In Helena, Patrick R. Cleburne prepared himself for war by purchasing a saddle horse and various articles: a comfort, a box of wads and two pounds of shot, a box of percussion caps, and for his uniform, a pair of sleeve buttons. The Yell Rifles and another company which had been organized in the county, the Phillips County Guards, prepared to depart for Little Rock. With Captain Cleburne on horseback at the head of the command, the two companies marched along Ohio and Rightor streets to the wharf. By steamboat they went down the Mississippi to Napoleon, and then up the Arkansas River, arriving at Little Rock on February 5.” 9. In order to prevent the unnecessary loss of civilian life should the surrounded arsenal be fired upon, the commander at the arsenal withdrew his troops and the arsenal passed from Federal to State control. Arkansas finally seceded from the Union on May 6th (see Appendix I) and the Yell Rifles (see Appendix II) were assigned to the 1st Regiment of the Arkansas State troops, becoming Company F. On May 14, 1861, the First Regiment, Arkansas State Troops, was organized at Mound City, six miles above Memphis on the Mississippi River. “The Yell Rifles joined with other militia companies from Arkansas to form the 1st Arkansas Infantry (which later became the 15th Arkansas). On May 14, Patrick Cleburne's qualifications for military command were recognized again, and he was 14 elected colonel. In the ensuing months, he drilled them into a unit that many said was the finest Confederate regiment beyond the Eastern states.” 10. On July 23, 1861, the regiment was enrolled in Confederate service at Pittman’s Ferry, Arkansas. Redesignated as the First Regiment, Arkansas Volunteers, with the Yell Rifles now becoming Company B. However, when it was learned that Colonel James Fleming Fagan’s regiment had also been designated as the First Regiment, Cleburne’s regiment was redesignated as the Fifteenth Regiment, Arkansas Volunteers, on December 31, 1861, and the Yell Rifles once again had its company designation changed, this time to Company C. It would retain this designation to the end of the war. 15 The Civil War was not fought in one arena between two contending forces. Rather, operations were conducted in two distinct theatres: the East, extending from the Atlantic to the Appalachian Mountains and the West, stretching from the windward side of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. It was in this Western theatre that Patrick Cleburne and his men would see action. The state of Missouri was a prize much desired by both the Union and Confederate governments at the beginning of hostilities in 1861. In nearly every category, including industrial production, mining, agricultural productivity, and in population, Missouri had no peer west of the Mississippi. Thus Missouri was indeed a prize worth contending for by North and South. The secessionist governor of Missouri was Claiborne Fox Jackson, who was convinced that Missourians desired to align with the south, despite of all of the evidence to the contrary, and so sought military assistance from the Confederacy to accomplish that goal. Major General Leonidas Polk was in charge of the force that was sent to bring into the Confederacy. Since Arkansas bordered Missouri the troops in that state were obviously the most salient to Polk’s plan for warfare in Missouri. As Polk did not command these troops he could only advise what the Arkansas troops should do, and so one of the most ill conceived campaigns started. Late July 1861 saw Pat Cleburne and the 1st Regiment of the Arkansas Volunteers, under the command of Brigadier General Hardee, camped at Pittman’s Creek. Hardee and his fellow general, Pillow, began almost immediately to work at cross purposes, the two generals could never agree on a plan of action. Thus Polk’s vaunted campaign into southeast Missouri, and beyond, soon bogged down in a morass of unmatched stubbornness and a woefully inadequate system of command. This would become a feature of the campaign in the Western theatre with the generals here 16 often failing to exercise a chain of command. Pat Cleburne’s first entry into the arena of warfare was an exercise in sheer futility. Despite this, his ability to lead was again recognised and on the 4th March 1862 he was promoted to Brigadier General. Soon all would change as Hardee was despatched to Shiloh in Kentucky. During the winter of 1861-62 Federal forces pushing southward from St. Louis captured Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. With the capture of Fort Donelson, and its 17,000 inhabitants, the whole Confederate defensive line stretching from the Appalachians to the Mississippi was severed. Albert Sidney Johnston scrambled to rally his stunned, demoralized troops before the Federals could exploit their advantage and, possibly, end the war very soon. Forces from all over the South - from even as far away as the Gulf Coast - gravitated toward the small railroad junction of Corinth, Mississippi, in the north-eastern part of the state. Realizing that he could not wait for another Federal advance, Johnston began concentrating forces at Corinth, Mississippi, where he hoped to take the offensive and destroy General Grant's Army of Tennessee before it could be joined by General Don Carlos Buell's Army of Ohio. The march from Corinth to Pittsburg Landing was longer than anticipated so Johnston’s troops did not arrive there till the evening of the 5th. When Johnston’s men attacked the Union forces on the morning of the 6th they achieved total surprise. The Rebels took Union position after another. Hardee was attacking Sherman and McClerand, Cleburne's Brigade was on the left flank of Hardee's Corps with Cleburne's 15th Arkansas was out front as skirmishers. Including Cleburne's Brigade, the front line was three miles in 17 length and consisted of Woods, Hindman's Brigades and Gladden's from Bragg's Corps. Suddenly there was a swamp in the middle of the front line, Cleburne and his men were forced to find a way around it. When they had traversed the swampy land the brigade was met with massed volleys and they had to fall back having suffered huge losses. Finally the Union troops managed to hold an area of sunken road, with the bullets whipping about, the area would become known as “the hornets nest”. With eleven assaults on the area repelled the Confederates bought in cannon, sixty two of them! Along with other brigades, Cleburne was ordered to attack the “the hornets nest” and under the covering fire of the cannons the Rebels managed to take the hornets nest after six hours of fighting. Mere yards from the sunken road was a peach orchard, General Johnston led the last charge on the peach orchard. “Governor Isham Harris of Tennessee, who had volunteered to serve as his aid during the battle, saw him reel in the saddle. “General are you hurt?” he cried. “Yes and I fear seriously,” Johnston said.”11. Johnston bleed to death his femoral artery had been severed. That night rain began to fall on the battlefield which took its name from a church there called Shiloh. As men, on both sides, slept Buell and his troops arrived. The battle the next day would be a bloodbath like that of the day before. On the morning of April 7, Cleburne counted only 800 men present out of the 2,700 who had entered the battle the previous day. That day had been a disaster in many ways. He noted, "Hundreds of his best men were dead or in hospitals." With the gallant few that remained, the brigade advanced and formed line of battle, once again facing the units of McClernard in the vicinity of Cavalry field. At midmorning Cleburne was ordered to advance, but realised he had no artillery support and that McClenard easily outflanked his left. An advance would be suicidal, and 18 Cleburne so reported to Breckenridge, who replied that his orders were positive and to move out. The advance was halted temporarily by an artillery duel fought over the brigades’ head. With Cleburne’s men caught in the middle, tree limbs and splinters began falling among the men killing and wounding may. The glade soon came under rifle fire as well. Captain Cowley, acting as major for the fallen Harris, fell with a bullet in the head. The fire was too much for the Tennessee’s of the brigade, and they fled to the rear. When the firing ceased, the line charged forward. Cleburne’s brigade could not engage the enemy but was subject to a withering fire of bullets and artillery shot as it moved through a thick undergrowth. This time the entire brigade was repulsed and broke. He reported that to his knowledge " the 15th Arkansas was the only regiment rallied anywhere near the scene of the disaster". Despite the fiasco of the attack, Cleburne demonstrated the tenacity he had shown the day before. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, Cleburne ordered the 15th Arkansas, all that he had left, to take and hold some abandoned cannon. The federals soon began to advance, and Cleburne seeing that reinforcements were on the way, gathered what remained of his old regiment and led it in a charge against the federals. The charge caused the federals to flee and bought time for the reinforcements to come into the line, but it cost a heavy price. Lieutenant Colonel Patton, the last field officer of the 15th, lay dead along with many others. Cleburne’s men continued to fire until they ran out of ammunition then fell back. By then only 58 men were still with the unit. Cleburne’s brigade was completely scattered and disorganised.” 12. There were 13,047 missing or dead on the Confederate side and 10,694 on the Union side, up till that time in the Civil War Shiloh was the fiercest battle fought and it shocked everyone. 19 The battle of Richmond, Kentucky, would see Pat Cleburne receive his first major wound of the war, so far. “In Maj.Gen. Kirby Smith's 1862 Confederate offensive into Kentucky, Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne led the advance with Col. John S. Scott's cavalry out in front. The Rebel cavalry, while moving north from Big Hill on the road to Richmond, Kentucky, on August 29, encountered Union troopers and began skirmishing. After noon, Union artillery and infantry joined the fray, forcing the Confederate cavalry to retreat to Big Hill. At that time, Brig. Gen. Mahlon D. Manson, who commanded Union forces in the area, ordered a brigade to march to Rogersville, toward the Rebels. Fighting for the day stopped after pursuing Union forces briefly skirmished with Cleburne's men in late afternoon. That night, Manson informed his superior, Maj. Gen. William Nelson, of his situation, and he ordered another brigade to be ready to march in support, when required. Kirby Smith ordered Cleburne to attack in the morning and promised to hurry reinforcements (Churchill's division). Cleburne started early, marching north, passed through Kinston, dispersed Union skirmishers, and approached Manson's battle line near Zion Church.” 13. While shouting a command to his men Cleburne had a minnie ball go through his mouth removing with it five of his front, bottom, teeth. With his cheek badly scarred from this wound Pat was prompted into growing a beard. Patrick had recovered from this injury in time to fight at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, on the 8th of October 1862. Perryville was to be the end of General Braxton Braggs “Kentucky invasion”. Bragg along with fellow general Edmund Kirby Smith devised plans to invade Kentucky in the summer of 1862. Bragg had routed the Union 20 army at Richmond and Kirby Smith had taken one of their garrisons at Munfordville. The Confederate armies having taken Lexington and Frankfort, now controlled most of central Kentucky. Northern forces were quick to react to the threat posed by the South and General Buell rushed to Bardstown, this action forced Bragg to remove his men to eastward to Perryville. The battle began at 3am, by 2pm the battle had begun in earnest. Cleburne and his men were held in reserve till nearly 4pm when they then moved forward and engaged in battle moving back the Union troops and taking higher ground. The high hills had caused problems for the Confederates with these highs being held by the artillerists and so it was that Patrick had his horse shot from under him being injured in the leg in the process. The battle was a Confederate success but still Bragg withdrew his army from Kentucky and into East Tennessee. Buell retained Kentucky by default. More than 15,000 Confederate soldiers would be struck down with typhoid, dysentery, scurvy and pneumonia during the 200 mile march. Braggs army would be renamed the army of Tennessee. The Army of the Tennessee was divided into two corps, one under General Hardee, the other under the command of General Polk. Cleburne’s division would become part of Hardee’s corps and a life long friendship would spring up between the two men. On December 31 1862 Bragg’s army of 38,000 would face up to the 43,000 men of the Army of Cumberland led by General Rosecrans, at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the banks of the Stone River. Over night the Rebels had moved into position ready to begin battle the instant that the sun came up. “Hardee had sent one of his divisions, under John C. Breckinridge, to extend the north end of the line east of the Stone's River to meet 21 a possible flanking attack. Hardee took command of McCown's division to use it in partnership with one of Hardee's own divisions under Major General Pat Cleburne for the dawn charge on the Yankees.”14. Patrick had been promoted to Major General a few days earlier on December 20th. About 6am, on the morning of the 31st, Hardee sent in his two divisions, 11,000 strong, forward in lines six deep. “Two Federal brigades ceased to exist and the survivors did not stop running until they were far in the rear. A Confederate prisoner who had been captured before the battle, Private Joseph T. McBride, was so disgusted at the rout of the Federals that he called out to the fleeing Union men: "What are you running for?! Why don't you stand and fight like men?!" A fellow prisoner roared at him: "For God's sake, Joe, don't try to rally the Yankees! Keep 'em on the run!" General Jeff Davis heard all the ruckus on his right, and ordered one of his brigades to turn 90 degrees to face the assault. One of Johnson's reserve brigades moved up among boulders and trees to extend the line. Four of Cleburne's brigades hit them hard, but the Union men, though outnumbered, poured fire into their attackers; one Federal regiment even countercharged the rebels.”15. Cleburne had unexpectedly found himself in the front line though his brigade had started some 500 yards to the rear. With the battle less than an hour old five Union brigades were in retreat. “The first indication Bragg had that his attack was not going as planned came just moments after McCown struck Johnson’s picket line. A courier from Hardee brought word that Cheatham had yet to advance and that, as a consequence, Cleburne’s right was exposed.”16. Exposed to the fire of the Union troops the Confederates were mowed down. Then Cheatham moved his four brigades forward to meet Davis’s men and Cleburne’s division was able to move around the Union troops so that by 10am the line of Union troops had been forced into a 22 “V” shape. By mid-morning, Bragg's army had suffered severely in the constant battering of the Union line. Hardee's Corps had lost one-third in killed or wounded. The Union soldiers were also being decimated and Sheridan’s men had run out of ammunition causing a break in the Union lines which the Confederates tried to exploit but Rosecrans moved his artillery forward causing two Confederate brigades to fall back after experiencing huge casualties. Soon with ammunition again restored to Sheridan’s men Rosecrans had secured the Union right flank. Four o’clock that afternoon saw the last offensive take place with Polk sending in four brigades of his division against Hazen’s Unionists, but only two of the brigades arrived but still they went in and were fired upon by the Union artillery. The Confederates were torn to pieces. This was to be the last skirmish of the day. New Years day arrived in cold, wet and miserable. Bodies lay where they had fallen the previous day and the night had been rent with the cries of the wounded begging for water or to be put out of their misery. “Bragg woke up on New Year's Day 1863 to the shock of finding that the Federals were still where they had been the night before. Never very decisive, Bragg didn't know what to make of it and spent the day doing nothing particularly important, though after the bloodletting of the day before his army wasn't in condition to do much anyway. His men scavenged the litter of Federal weapons and equipment on the battlefield. Polk moved troops into the abandoned Round Forest, made contact with the Yankees, and decided it would be unwise to advance further. Breckinridge moved back into his positions on the right of the Confederate line. There 23 was no more than skirmishing all day long. Just before sundown, heavy firing broke out, but it died out quickly.”17. January 2nd was grey and wet, this later turning to sleet. “Bragg at last accepted that only a determined assault would dislodge Rosecrans, who showed no intention of leaving without a fight.”18. All afternoon the Army of the Tennessee moved into position in preparation for the 4pm offensive. The Unionists had noticed the activity and began moving their men into position. When the Confederates attacked they came under fire of the Union artillery but despite this they managed to break the Union line and force the Yankees to withdraw. It was another extremely cold, wet night. Rosecrans throughout the night had begun to receive reinforcements and by the time the sun had started to rise on January 3rd Bragg had been informed of this and decided to withdraw. “Ironically it was Bragg himself who finally released the latent hostility of his generals. On January 11, he sent Hardee, Beckinridge, Cleburne and Cheatham what was perhaps the most incredible document addressed by a commander to his lieutenants during the war. It was a circular letter, in which Bragg solicited their views on the propriety of the retreat from Murfreesboro and (although there was doubt among its recipients as to whether the intent of the note was to raise this second issue) Bragg’s fitness for continued command of the Army of Tennessee…Three days later, Cleburne responded. The 24 Irishman recommended only that Bragg resign, evading the issue of the withdrawal from Murfreesboro altogether.19. Of the eight who reached the position of full general in the Confederate army, General Braxton Bragg was the most controversial. Graduating from West point in 1837 Bragg served in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican War. Serving in the army till 1856 when he retired to his plantation, in Louisiana, Bragg had earned a reputation as a strict disciplinarian. After secession, he was commissioned Brigadier General CSA on 7 March 1861, and promoted to Major General on 12 September 1861. He was finally promoted to full general on 12 April 1862 and was given the command of the Army of the Tennessee on 27 June in the same year, a position he would hold till November 1863. His defects were that not only was he was hell bent on following rules to the point of absurdity he was also an old school commander who had been taught at West Point that a frontal assault makes for the best strategy, but this was not a strategy suited to the conditions that would be encountered in the Civil War. “Technological advances relating to weapons had served to make defense much easier and straight-on charges much more perilous. Bragg, like many of his contemporaries, never realized that a change of tactics was in order.”20. Jefferson Davis had one great weakness and that was excessive loyalty to his friends which was why Braxton Bragg retained command of the Army of the Tennessee as long as he did. Pat Cleburne became antagonistic towards Bragg as Cleburne was a man who hated to lose and Bragg would lose more battles than he won. 25 With the coming of spring military action started up again. The Union army began its advance on June 24th and several days later they moved through Hoovers Gap, threatening Pat Cleburne’s flank rear. At this Cleburne and his men were ordered to fall back to Tullahoma, Bragg decided to retreat further behind the Elk River eventually stopping in Chattanooga. With Rosecrans regrouping west of Chattanooga Bragg was forced to withdraw from Chattanooga in order to protect his supply line. Bragg would consolidate his troops at Lafayette, Georgia, some 26 miles from Chattanooga; Rosecran began then to concentrate his troops along the Lafayette Road. On September 18th Bragg would post his Army of the Tennessee on the west bank of Chickamauga Creek. Fighting began on the morning on the 19th. Bragg had a plan to attack the Unionists on their left flank thus cutting it off from Chattanooga. Hill’s corps, with Cleburne’s division was to spearhead the attack. That afternoon the division marched eight miles to the point of attack and at 6pm Cleburne gave the order to advance. Breaking through the lines they captured three guns and two regimental standards. With darkness falling the division camped for the night. The next morning Cleburne’s division resumed the battle on a mile wide front against the federal forces. Getting to within 175 yards of the Union position they could not advance further and at 11am, having suffered staggering loses Cleburne pulled his men back. One in every three men in the division was either wounded or killed. The next morning, at 9am, Cleburne’s division was ordered into the fray – the battle having started at dawn – but the Union soldiers had by now had time to build a line of barricades using everything available to them. Cleburne’s men were repulsed, with heavy losses again. The fighting shifted to other parts of the field. At this critical 26 moment the soldiers in Polk's Tennessee and Arkansas Brigade ran out of ammunition. Cleburne, seeing this, reacted quickly by having ammunition rushed forward. Then he and members of his staff began breaking open the boxes and passing out the ammunition, thus prolonging the attack. Finally, the Union line began to withdraw and Cleburne's men rushed forward, claiming the barricades. By sunset the Army of Tennessee had won its first battle and Pat Cleburne had shown that he was a true soldier’s soldier having shared every dangerous minute with his men at the front lines. After the defeat of the Union Army at Chickamauga Rosecrans fortified Chattanooga, rather than attack Bragg decided to starve out Rosecrans. At this time Bragg was preoccupied trying to quell the insubordination in the ranks as feuding had broken out among his generals with Cleburne signing a petition, addressed to President Davis, requesting that Bragg be relieved of his command. Cleburne had joined with the other generals in this as he felt it the right thing to do to back the other generals in trying to get Bragg relieved. Davis backed Bragg and told him to do whatever necessary to restore unity among his generals. This resulted in Polk being transferred and General Hill relieved of his command. Longstreet had been seconded to the Army of the Tennessee arriving on the eve of the Battle of Chickamauga, expecting to be named as Bragg’s replacement he had become an unruly element. In order to placate Longstreet Bragg gave him the entire left flank at Chattanooga. Disobeying Braggs orders entirely Longstreet managed to give away the entire left flank to the union forces. With this he lobbied Davis to be sent back to Virginia. Davis agreed and Bragg concurred so Longstreet set 27 back from whence he had come, and in doing so hopefully drawing away some of the attention of the Federal forces from Chattanooga by attacking their forces in Knoxville. November 24th and Sherman crossed the Tennessee River and Cleburne was ordered to engage his army. The biggest mistake Sherman made now was not to set his entire strength against Cleburne’s lone division, this cost him seven hours of fighting. Finally Thomas and his Unionists attacked the rebels winning the day for Sherman. Now Cleburne acted as rearguard for the Army of the Tennessee during their retreat. He was then ordered to hold Ringgold Gap at all cost. Then General Hooker attacked, after four hours, out numbered three to one, then “Cleburne received a dispatch stating that the Confederate trains were safe, and he could withdraw his command. By 2:00 P.M. the Confederate rear guard had retreated one mile to the south. At a cost of 221 casualties Cleburne saved the wagon trains and much of the artillery of the Army of Tennessee and earned the thanks of the Confederate Congress.” 21. As a mark of recognition for his actions Cleburne was allowed to retain his distinctive blue flag with its white moon in the middle – from May 1863 all Confederates units had to carry the National Flag. Cleburne’s division would be the only one in the whole of the Army of Tennessee to be accorded such an honour. Now Cleburne and his troops would go to winter camp. Bragg at last sent in his resignation to Davis, who accepted it and placed Hardee in temporary command. Cleburne was delighted with the change in command. 28 By the time Patrick had arrived in America the country was already starting to ferment with anti-slavery and pro-tariff agitation. The Southern states which depended on slaves for labour for their cotton crops (upon which the Southern economy depended) were opposed to the anti-slavery laws that abolitionists wanted to implement while the industrialised North heavily favoured such laws. The North was growing at a fast rate, due to immigration, while the population of the South remained fairly static. “Always aware that the North was the faster growing- section, the South foresaw the day when the North would control the government. Then Southerners believed, there would be legislation – a stiff high-tariff law, for instance – that would ruin the South.” 22.. The Fugitive Slave Act saw Northerners coming to the aid of runaway slaves and Harriet Beecher Stowes book, “Uncle Toms Cabin”, would tug at the heartstrings of many a Northerner. The Kansas-Nebraska Act which saw these two new territories given the right to permit or abolish slavery themselves rather than by an act of the Union set the issue at a new high. Extremists began to whip up peoples emotions, feelings over the issue of slavery ran even higher than before, “the antagonism between the sections came finally and tragically, to express itself through the slavery issue. It was not the only cause of the Civil War, but it was unquestionably the one cause without which the war would not have taken place.”23. Certainly Pat had never entered the war because of the issue of slavery for as he wrote to his brother “I am with the South in life or in death, in victory or defeat. I never owned a negro and care nothing for them, but these people have been my friends and have stood up to me on all occasions. In addition to this, I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the constitution and the fundamental principals of the government. They no 29 longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.”24. For Cleburne the issue was not slavery, it was the right to secede that mattered, political independence meant more than anything else to him. Maybe this lack of understanding of the South’s emotional and economic commitment to the institution of slavery made him less cautious than he should have been when it came to proposing that slaves should be enlisted into the Confederate army. With the Confederates having lost so many men on the battlefields and with so many more having suffered terrible wounds by 1864 the South was experiencing a serious lack of men in its ranks. Cleburne felt the answer lay in the enlistment of slaves. The North had already black soldiers and Cleburne felt that here lay the answer to the South’s problems. Drafting a proposal, which he got thirteen fellow officers to sign, (see appendix III), Cleburne had written "The necessity for more fighting men is upon us. We can only get a sufficiency by making the Negro share the danger and hardship of the war. If we arm him and train him and make him fight for his country, every consideration of principle and policy demands that we shall set him and his whole race, who side with us, free." Cleburne presented this to General Joseph Johnston on January 2nd 1864. General Johnston having replaced Hardee as the commander of the Army of the Tennessee, it was at his headquarters in Dalton, Georgia, that Cleburne tabled his proposal that slaves should be enlisted in the army and if they survived the war should be rewarded with their freedom. Believing that the proposal was beyond the scope of the military in that it dealt with political issues Johnston refused to forward the proposal to Davis in Richmond. However, Jefferson Davis did receive Cleburne’s proposal and it was returned to him, from the President, on January 31st with the request that it be suppressed in case of possible public outrage. 30 Robert E. Lee would advocate, in January 1865, the enlistment of slaves and on March 13th of that year the Confederate Congress finally authorised the enlistment of slaves to provide additional forces. It would be too little too late as the South would surrender in April. Cleburne’s championing of the proposal probably put an end to any thoughts he may have had of further promotion. Over a period of eight months Cleburne was passed over for the following assignments to corps command in the Army of Tennessee: - General Breckinridge to General D H Hill’s Corps; - General J B Hood to General Breckinridge’s Corps; - General A P Stewart to General Polk’s Corps on the latter’s death at Pine Mountain; - General Stephen D Lee to General Hood’s Corps on his elevation to command of the Army in mid-July 1864; - General B F Cheatham to General Hardee’s Corps on the latter’s transfer. Any hopes that Cleburne had of advancement had been totally shattered. 31 During that January of 1864 Hardee had confided to his good friend Cleburne that he was getting married and asked Cleburne to be his best man. Hardee and Cleburne traveled to Mobile, Alabama and it was at the marriage, on January 13th, that Cleburne met twenty four year old Susan Tarleton the maid of honour. Pat was smitten and before he returned to his division he asked Susan to marry him. She would not answer but instead gave him permission to write to her. A month later Pat too leave and went back to Mobile again asking Susan Tarleton to marry him and at last she agreed. In early May 1864, Sherman began his offensive against Atlanta by making a probe at Mill Creek Gap and Dug Gap where Cleburne’s troops faced the Union troops. Within two weeks Sherman had marched his army half the distance between Chattanooga and Atlanta, outflanking Johnston’s positions at Dalton and Resaca, and forcing him to retreat from his entrenched positions. Cleburne’s division fought their opponents almost daily in a series of encounters; the skirmishing between the two armies never seemed to cease. They were not defeated and had not been driven from their positions, but nevertheless they fell back. While the conflict was going on Cleburne kept up his correspondence with his fiancée and was obviously looking forward to his future marriage. The campaign resumed. At Pickett’s Mill Cleburne positioned his brigades so well that when the Federals attacked, thinking that they had overlapped the enemy’s flank; they encountered the veterans of Missionary Ridge and Ringgold Gap. The Confederate’s line held but if the Unionists had broken the line or managed to get around the flank then it was probable that the Rebels would have been routed. The fighting continued until well 32 past sundown. At 10:00pm Granbury, one of Cleburne’s brigade commanders, suggested that he should attack with his brigade and Cleburne approved. Granbury’s men charged, broke the Federals who fled the field leaving hundreds of dead and many prisoners. Pickett’s Mill was another clear victory for Cleburne’s Division. For the third time his men had repelled attacks by larger forces and for a third time saved the Army from potential disaster. For the next month there were no major battles but continual skirmishing began to weaken the effectiveness of the Confederates. Again, at Kennesaw Mountain, Cleburne and Cheatham’s divisions repulsed eight thousand Federal troops with great loss. Regardless of the victories at Pickett’s Mill and Kennesaw Mountain, the Army of Tennessee was retreating again after Sherman had outflanked Johnston, crossing the Chattahoochee River and threatening the Confederates communications with Atlanta. On July 17, Johnston was dismissed from command and ordered to turn the Army over to Hood. The elevation of Hood was a snub for Hardee who was the senior corps commander. Now the fate of Atlanta was in the hands of General Hood who had been successful in his undermining of Johnston, by secretly corresponding with Richmond complaining about what he perceived was a lack of aggression by Johnston. Hood’s appointment was a fateful move. For Cleburne, it would be, ultimately, a fatal one. On July 22, there was fierce fighting at Bald Hill near Atlanta. There was no decisive outcome of the encounter but the Confederates suffered cruelly with casualties numbering 33 between 5,500 and 8,000. During the engagement at Bald Hill the commander of the Unionists, Major General James McPherson, was killed in front of Cleburne’s division. It failed to halt or even slow Sherman’s tightening noose on the city. For the balance of July and throughout August, Cleburne’s men were on the move almost constantly. On August 31, the Federals repelled the Rebels’ attack at Jonesboro and on the following day broke through the defenses, capturing Govan and 600 of the men in his brigade. That night Hood ordered the evacuation of Atlanta. After a period of rest the Army arrived at Palmetto on September 20. Hardee applied to the President for a transfer and left the Army on September 27. Cleburne himself applied to Hood for two weeks leave to return to Mobile to be married, his application was refused. The Army proceeded north to Dalton then crossed into Alabama and arrived in Florence over the Tennessee River on November 13. Here, Hood unveiled his grand scheme. He would march the Army north and retake Nashville. After a brief skirmish at Spring Hill on November 29, the Federals at night had slipped away to Franklin. Next day Hood was furious placing blame on Cheatham and Cleburne for the fiasco. At a meeting at headquarters Hood announced his decision to make an immediate frontal attack and asked for comments. General Forrest objected, saying that he did not believe that the Union entrenchments could be taken without great loss of life. He went on further to say that the Unionists could be flanked from their works without much trouble. Cheatham and Cleburne agreed but Hood had made up his mind. The assault at Franklin would be a severe lesson in what he would demand in aggressive action. It was no accident that Generals Brown and Cleburne were posted to the front rank and told to 34 attack along the Columbia Pike, where the Federal lines were the strongest. “As Cleburne mounted his horse to leave, Hood gave strict orders for the assault. Cleburne responded, ‘We will take the works or fall in the attempt.’”24. Cleburne rode back to his command and gave his brigade commanders their orders. General Govan saw that he was depressed and remarked to Cleburne that few of them would ever return to Arkansas to tell of the battle. Cleburne said, "Well Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men." 15,000 men charged the fortifications with General Cleburne in the forefront. Soon his horse was shot from under him, a boy offered his mare to the General but it was shot down as he mounted it. General Govan then recounted that General Cleburne turned toward the enemy, drew his sword, and marched into the smoke waving his cap. His body was found lying about 40 yards in front of the entrenchments. This historic site is now a Pizza Hut parking lot. 35 The next day Cleburne’s body was interred in Rose Hill Cemetery. Shortly after he would be reburied in Ashwood Cemetery, behind St. John’s Church, Colombia, Tennessee, a place he had passed by a few days before on his way to Franklin remarking it would be a lovely place to be buried in. In 1870 his body was returned to Helena, Arkansas, Generals Lucius Polk, and Frank Cheatham, the former governor of Tennessee, Isham Harris and Jefferson Davis himself, walked in a public procession that accompanied Cleburne’s coffin to the docks at Memphis for the trip downriver. Pat Cleburne’s final resting place was to be Evergreen Cemetery overlooking Helena. Patrick Cleburne entered into the American Civil War as an American, what was to follow in the coming years was an American tragedy played out on American soil, but he was always an Irishman at heart. His conviction in his duty sprang from his love for his adopted country and his determination to protect the Confederacy. This determination came from the struggles his own far flung country had fought for and would keep on fighting for, the struggle for freedom. Along with his friends and neighbours he entered into a war of freedom and liberty. He fought as hard as he trained, his men were the best drilled in the Army of the Tennessee, and he fought like the man he was honest and loyal, truthful and valiant, and he died in the same manner. Cleburne achieved lasting fame for his brilliant tactical command. It was said of him that where he attacked, no force could defend, and where he defended, no force could overcome save only once, and there you’ll find his grave. Cleburne lived and died for the cause of nationalism, having absorbed Southern nationalism he willing accepted the struggle for Confederate nationhood. 36 In May 1891, at a dedication of a monument erected at Cleburne’s grave site, General George W Gordon who had fought and been captured at Franklin gave the memorial address: “A truer patriot or knightlier soldier never fought and never died. Valor (sic) never lost a braver son or freedom a nobler champion…He was a patriot by instinct and a soldier by nature. He loved his country, its soldiers, its banners, its battleflags, its sovereignty, its independence. For these he fought, for these he fell.”25. The only statue of a general at the American Museum of Immigration, in the base of the Statue of Liberty, is that of Patrick Cleburne. A fitting epitaph for this Irish immigrant who espoused the cause of liberty, and who remained an Irish Rebel to the last. 37 APPENDIX I Arkansas Secession May 6, 1861 AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America." Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas: Therefore we, the people of the State of Arkansas, in convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the "ordinance and acceptance of compact" passed and approved by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas on the 18th day of October, A.D. 1836, whereby it was by said General Assembly ordained that by virtue of the authority vested in said General Assembly by the provisions of the ordinance adopted by the convention of delegates assembled at Little Rock for the purpose of forming a constitution and system of government for said State, the propositions set forth in "An act supplementary to an act entitled `An act for the admission of the State of Arkansas into the Union, and to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the same, and for other purposes,'" were freely accepted, ratified, and irrevocably confirmed, articles of compact and union between the State of Arkansas and the United States, and all other laws and every other law and ordinance, whereby the State of Arkansas became a member of the Federal Union, be, and the same are hereby, in all respects and for every purpose herewith consistent, 38 repealed, abrogated, and fully set aside; and the union now subsisting between the State of Arkansas and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby forever dissolved. And we do further hereby declare and ordain, That the State of Arkansas hereby resumes to herself all rights and powers heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America; that her citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Government of the United States, and that she is in full possession and exercise of all the rights and sovereignty which appertain to a free and independent State. We do further ordain and declare, That all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States of America, or of any act or acts of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this State, and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in full force and effect, in nowise altered or impaired, and have the same effect as if this ordinance had not been passed. Adopted and passed in open convention on the 6th day of May, A.D. 1861. 39 APPENDIX II The following roster lists the original members of the Yell Rifles who enrolled in the company on April 8, 1861. Bailey, Charles H—Private. Bailey, Ralph N—Fifth Sergeant. Barksdale, Robert E—Fourth Corporal. Barlow, J C—Private; transferred to the Dallas Artillery, promoted to first lieutenant and captain. Blankenship, Willis P—Private. Blount, Francis B—Private. Booth, Robert P—Private. Brodnax, William G—Private. Brown, James M—Private. Burgess, Vardry M—Private; transferred to regimental band. Carr, H L—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Chandler, Charles P—Private. Clark, M B L—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. 40 Cleburne, Patrick Ronayne—Captain; promoted colonel, brigadier-general and major-general; killed in action at Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864. Clopton, James W—Third Sergeant. Cowley, Edward H—First Lieutenant; promoted captain. Dade, Louis G—Private. Delaney, Thomas J—Private. Dodge, Lemuel P—Private; appointed second lieutenant of Co. D, 15th Arkansas Infantry. Dowty, Thomas J—Private. Duval, Elmore D—Private. Edmondson, William—Private. Elliott, Quinton H—First Corporal. Essop, John W—Private. Gilbreath, David M—Private. Gillen, James—Private. Goff, J—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Gray, James C—Private. Green, John—Private. Hall, J W—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Hall, James P—Private. Harrison, Thomas—Private. Hickey, Preston G—Private. Hicks, Malcomb L—Private. Hill, William A B—Private. 41 Jackson, Owen T—Private. Jones, Thompson L—Private. Kendall, Joseph W—Private. King, Stanhope H—Private; appointed major and assistant commissary in Preston Smith’s Tennessee Brigade. Kinsey, William H—Private. Knowlton, Robert—Private. Lambert, Alexander P—Second Corporal. Langford, James F—Second Lieutenant; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Langford, Robert C—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Langford, William H—Private; discharged, did not enter Confederate service. Lemon, Joseph—Private. Littell, Philander—Private. Locke, William J—Private; transferred to Co. H, 2nd Tennessee Infantry. McCrary, Francis O—Private. McGonigle, James H—Private. Mangum, Leonard Henderson—First Sergeant; wounded at Shiloh. Moncrief, Thomas B—Private; transferred to Co. H, 2nd Arkansas Infantry. Moore, Charles L—Private; appointed third lieutenant; appointed captain and assistant quartermaster, 15th Arkansas Infantry. Moore, Peter—Private. Morrison, William H—Private. Mulkey, James I—Private. Murphy, James M—Private. 42 Newman, Joshua—Private. O’Neil, Samuel—Private. Pearce, William H—Private. Phillips, Stephen H—Private. Polk, Lucius Eugene—Third Lieutenant; promoted first lieutenant; promoted colonel, 15th Arkansas Infantry; appointed brigadier-general; wounded at Kennesaw Mountain, June 10, 1864. Quarte, Angus—Private. Randle, Angus P—Private. Ross, Canada—Private; also served in the Helena Artillery. Ross, James A—Private. Rambo, Parmeseas F—Private. Sale, George W—Private. Sale, Henry A—Private. Sale, Melville W—Private. Scott, Arthur M—Private. Sellers, William W—Private. Simpson, David H—Private. Smith, Henry H—Private. Smith, Henry L—Private. Smith, John W L—Private. Smith, Moses E—Private. Stansell, J Walker—Private; appointed commissary, 15th Arkansas Infantry. Stone, William H—Private; also served in the Appeal Battery. 43 Taylor, Phillip H—Fourth Sergeant. Terry, John F—Second Sergeant. Thorn, Thomas S—Private. Tollison, William P—Private. Wellborn, Elias—Private. West, John H—Private. Yerby, Robert N—Private. 2001 -copyright -The above information may be used for non-commercial historical and genealogical purposes only and with the consent of the page owner may be copied for the same purposes so long as this notice remains a part of the copied material. EDWARD G. GERDES 44 Appendix III Pat Cleburne's Negro Enlistment Proposal Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#24 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] [JANUARY 2, 1864.] COMMANDING GENERAL, THE CORPS, DIVISION, BRIGADE, AND REGIMENTAL COMMANDERS OF THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE: GENERAL: Moved by the exigency in which our country is now placed, we take the liberty of laying before you, unofficially, our views on the present state of affairs. The subject is so grave, and our views so new, we feel it a duty both to you and the cause that before going further we should submit them for your judgment and receive your suggestions in regard to them. We therefore respectfully ask you to give us an expression of your views in the premises. We have now been fighting for nearly three years, have spilled much of our best blood, and lost, consumed, or thrown to the flames an amount of property equal in value to the specie currency of the world. Through some lack in our system the fruits of our struggles and sacrifices have invariably slipped away from us and left us nothing but long lists of dead and mangled. Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our territory or harassing those of the enemy, we are hemmed in today into less than two-thirds of it, and still the enemy menacingly confronts us at every point with superior forces. Our soldiers can see no end to this state of affairs except in our own exhaustion; hence, instead of rising to the occasion, they are sinking into a fatal apathy, growing weary of hardships and slaughters which promise no results. In this state of things it is easy to understand why there is a growing belief that some black catastrophe is not far ahead of us, and that unless some extraordinary change is soon made in our condition we must overtake it. The consequences of this condition are showing themselves more plainly every day; restlessness of morals spreading everywhere, manifesting itself in the army in a growing disregard for private rights; desertion spreading to a class of soldiers it never dared to tamper with before; military commissions sinking in the estimation of the soldier; our supplies failing; our firesides in ruins. If this state continues much longer we must be subjugated. Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold most sacred--slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth 45 will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision. It means the crushing of Southern manhood, the hatred of our former slaves, who will, on a spy system, be our secret police. The conqueror's policy is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them, and in training an army of negroes the North no doubt holds this thought in perspective. We can see three great causes operating to destroy us: First, the inferiority of our armies to those of the enemy in point of numbers; second, the poverty of our single source of supply in comparison with his several sources; third, the fact that slavery, from being one of our chief sources of strength at the commencement of the war, has now become, in a military point of view, one of our chief sources of weakness. The enemy already opposes us at every point with superior numbers, and is endeavoring to make the preponderance irresistible. President Davis, in his recent message, says the enemy "has recently ordered a large conscription and made a subsequent call for volunteers, to be followed, if ineffectual, by a still further draft." In addition, the President of the United States announces that "he has already in training an army of 100,000 negroes as good as any troops," and every fresh raid he makes and new slice of territory he wrests from us will add to this force. Every soldier in our army already knows and feels our numerical inferiority to the enemy. Want of men in the field has prevented him from reaping the fruits of his victories, and has prevented him from having the furlough he expected after the last reorganization,, and when he turns from the wasting armies in the field to look at the source of supply, he finds nothing in the prospect to encourage him. Our single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks. The enemy has three sources of supply: First, his own motley population; secondly, our slaves; and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a crusade against us by fictitious pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who meet no hindrance from their Governments in such enterprise, because these Governments are equally antagonistic to the institution. In touching the third cause, the fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse prejudice and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to look at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom. Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery has given to the North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy in a purely military point of view, by supplying him with an army from our granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment, and in some respects an insidious weakness. Wherever slavery is once seriously disturbed, whether by the actual presence or the approach of the enemy, or even by a cavalry raid, the whites can no longer with safety to their property openly sympathize with our cause. The fear of their slaves is continually haunting them, and from silence and apprehension many of these soon learn to wish the war stopped on any terms. The next stage is to take the oath to save property, and they become dead to us, if not open enemies. To prevent raids we are forced to scatter our forces, and are not free to move and strike like the enemy; his vulnerable points are carefully selected and fortified depots. Ours are found in every point where there is a slave to set free. All along the lines slavery is comparatively valueless to ns for labor, but of great and increasing worth to the enemy for information. It is an omnipresent spy system, pointing out our valuable men to the enemy, revealing 46 our positions, purposes, and resources, and yet acting so safely and secretly that there is no means to guard against it. Even in the heart of our country, where our hold upon this secret espionage is firmest, it waits but the opening fire of the enemy's battle line to wake it, like a torpid serpent, into venomous activity. In view of the state of affairs what does our country propose to do? In the words of President Davis "no effort must be spared to add largely to our effective force as promptly as possible. The sources of supply are to be found in restoring to the army all who are improperly absent, putting an end to substitution, modifying the exemption law, restricting details, and placing in the ranks such of the able-bodied men now employed as wagoners, nurses, cooks, and other employés, as are doing service for which the negroes may be found competent." Most of the men improperly absent, together with many of the exempts and men having substitutes, are now without the Confederate lines and cannot be calculated on. If all the exempts capable of bearing arms were enrolled, it will give us the boys below eighteen, the men above forty-five, and those persons who are left at home to meet the wants of the country and the army, but this modification of the exemption law will remove from the fields and manufactories most of the skill that directed agricultural and mechanical labor, and, as stated by the President, "details will have to be made to meet the wants of the country," thus sending many of the men to be derived from this source back to their homes again. Independently of this, experience proves that striplings and men above conscript age break down and swell the sick lists more than they do the ranks. The portion now in our lines of the class who have substitutes is not on the whole a hopeful element, for the motives that created it must have been stronger than patriotism, and these motives added to what many of them will call breach of faith, will cause some to be not forthcoming, and others to be unwilling and discontented soldiers. The remaining sources mentioned by the President have been so closely pruned in the Army of Tennessee that they will be found not to yield largely. The supply from all these sources, together with what we now have in the field, will exhaust the white race, and though it should greatly exceed expectations and put us on an equality with the enemy, or even give us temporary advantages, still we have no reserve to meet unexpected disaster or to supply a protracted struggle. Like past years, 1864 will diminish our ranks by the casualties of war, and what source of repair is there left us? We therefore see in the recommendations of the President only a temporary expedient, which at the best will leave us twelve months hence in the same predicament we are in now. The President attempts to meet only one of the depressing causes mentioned; for the other two he has proposed no remedy. They remain to generate lack of confidence in our final success, and to keep us moving down hill as heretofore. Adequately to meet the causes which are now threatening ruin to our country, we propose, in addition to a modification of the President's plans, that we retain in service for the war all troops now in service, and that we immediately commence training a large reserve of the most courageous of our slaves, and further that we guarantee freedom within a reasonable time to every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war. As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the latter--give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself. If we are correct in this assumption it only remains to show how this great national sacrifice is, in all human probabilities, to change the current of success and sweep the invader from our country. Our country has already some friends in England and France, and there are strong 47 motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist us, but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would be in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century. England has paid hundreds of millions to emancipate her West India slaves and break up the slave trade. Could she now consistently spend her treasure to reinstate slavery in this country? But this barrier once removed, the sympathy and the interests of these and other nations will accord with our own, and we may expect from them both moral support and material aid. One thing is certain, as soon as the great sacrifice to independence is made and known in foreign countries there will be a complete change of front in our favor of the sympathies of the world. This measure will deprive the North of the moral and material aid which it now derives from the bitter prejudices with which foreigners view the institution, and its war, if continued, will henceforth be so despicable in their eyes that the source of recruiting will be dried up. It will leave the enemy's negro army no motive to fight for, and will exhaust the source from which it has been recruited. The idea that it is their special mission to war against slavery has held growing sway over the Northern people for many years, and has at length ripened into an armed and bloody crusade against it. This baleful superstition has so far supplied them with a courage and constancy not their own. It is the most powerful and honestly entertained plank in their war platform. Knock this away and what is left? A bloody ambition for more territory, a pretended veneration for the Union, which one of their own most distinguished orators (Doctor Beecher in his Liverpool speech)openly avowed was only used as a stimulus to stir up the anti-slavery crusade, and lastly the poisonous and selfish interests which are the fungus growth of the war itself. Mankind may fancy it a great duty to destroy slavery, but what interest can mankind have in upholding this remainder of the Northern war platform? Their interests and feelings will be diametrically opposed to it. The measure we propose will strike dead all John Brown fanaticism, and will compel the enemy to draw off altogether or in the eyes of the world to swallow the Declaration of Independence without the sauce and disguise of philanthropy. This delusion of fanaticism at an end, thousands of Northern people will have leisure to look at home and to see the gulf of despotism into which they themselves are rushing. The measure will at one blow strip the enemy of foreign sympathy and assistance, and transfer them to the South; it will dry up two of his three sources of recruiting; it will take from his negro army the only motive it could have to fight against the South, and will probably cause much of it to desert over to us; it will deprive his cause of the powerful stimulus of fanaticism, and will enable him to see the rock on which his so called friends are now piloting him. The immediate effect of the emancipation and enrollment of negroes on the military strength of the South would be: To enable us to have armies numerically superior to those of the North, and a reserve of any size we might think necessary; to enable us to take the offensive, move forward, and forage on the enemy. It would open to us in prospective another and almost untouched source of supply, and furnish us with the means of preventing temporary disaster, and carrying on a protracted struggle. It would instantly remove all the vulnerability, embarrassment, and inherent weakness which result from slavery. The approach of the enemy would no longer find every household surrounded by spies; the fear that sealed the master's lips and the avarice that has, in so many cases, tempted him practically to desert us would alike be removed. There would be no recruits awaiting the enemy with open arms, no complete 48 history of every neighborhood with ready guides, no fear of insurrection in the rear, or anxieties for the fate of loved ones when our armies moved forward. The chronic irritation of hope deferred would be joyfully ended with the negro, and the sympathies of his whole race would be due to his native South. It would restore confidence in an early termination of the war with all its inspiring consequences, and even if contrary to all expectations the enemy should succeed in overrunning the South, instead of finding a cheap, ready-made means of holding it down, he would find a common hatred and thirst for vengeance, which would break into acts at every favorable opportunity, would prevent him from settling on our lands, and render the South a very unprofitable conquest. It would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause and place independence above every question of property. The very magnitude of the sacrifice itself, such as no nation has ever voluntarily made before, would appal our enemies, destroy his spirit and his finances, and fill our hearts with a pride and singleness of purpose which would clothe us with new strength in battle. Apart from all other aspects of the question, the necessity for more fighting men is upon us. We can only get a sufficiency by making the negro share the danger and hardships of the war. If we arm and train him and make him fight for the country in her hour of dire distress, every consideration of principle and policy demand that we should set him and his whole race who side with us free. It is a first principle with mankind that he who offers his life in defense of the State should receive from her in return his freedom and his happiness, and we believe in acknowledgment of this principle. The Constitution of the Southern States has reserved to their respective governments the power to free slaves for meritorious services to the State. It is politic besides. For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field. The hope of freedom is perhaps the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his present condition. It would be preposterous then to expect him to fight against it with any degree of enthusiasm, therefore we must bind him to our cause by no doubtful bonds; we must leave no possible loophole for treachery to creep in. The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a thousand fold more dangerous: therefore when we make soldiers of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also. We can do this more effectually than the North can now do, for we can give the negro not only his own freedom, but that of his wife and child, and can secure it to him in his old home. To do this, we must immediately make his marriage and parental relations sacred in the eyes of the law and forbid their sale. The past legislation of the South concedes that large free middle class of negro blood, between the master and slave, must sooner or later destroy the institution. If, then, we touch the institution at all, we would do best to make the most of it, and by emancipating the whole race upon reasonable terms, and within such reasonable time as will prepare both races for the change, secure to ourselves all the advantages, and to our enemies all the disadvantages that can arise, both at home and abroad, from such a sacrifice. Satisfy the negro that if he faithfully adheres to our standard during the war he shall receive his freedom and that of his race. Give him as an earnest of our intentions such immediate immunities as will impress him with our sincerity and be in keeping with his new condition, enroll a portion of his class as soldiers 49 of the Confederacy, and we change the race from a dreaded weakness to a position of strength. Will the slaves fight? The helots of Sparta stood their masters good stead in battle. In the great sea fight of Lepanto where the Christians checked forever the spread of Mohammedanism over Europe, the galley slaves of portions of the fleet were promised freedom, and called on to fight at a critical moment of the battle. They fought well, and civilization owes much to those brave galley slaves. The negro slaves of Saint Domingo, fighting for freedom, defeated their white masters and the French troops sent against them. The negro slaves of Jamaica revolted, and under the name of Maroons held the mountains against their masters for 150 years; and the experience of this war has been so far that half-trained negroes have fought as bravely as many other half-trained Yankees. If, contrary to the training of a lifetime, they can be made to face and fight bravely against their former masters, how much more probable is it that with the allurement of a higher reward, and led by those masters, they would submit to discipline and face dangers. We will briefly notice a few arguments against this course. It is said Republicanism cannot exist without the institution. Even were this true, we prefer any form of government of which the Southern people may have the molding, to one forced upon us by a conqueror. It is said the white man cannot perform agricultural labor in the South. The experience of this army during the heat of summer from Bowling Green, Ky., to Tupelo, Miss., is that the white man is healthier when doing reasonable work in the open field than at any other time. It is said an army of negroes cannot be spared from the fields. A sufficient number of slaves is now administering to luxury alone to supply the place of all we need, and we believe it would be better to take half the able bodied men off a plantation than to take the one master mind that economically regulated its operations. Leave some of the skill at home and take some of the muscle to fight with. It is said slaves will not work after they are freed. We think necessity and a wise legislation will compel them to labor for a living. It is said it will cause terrible excitement and some disaffection from our cause. Excitement is far preferable to the apathy which now exists, and disaffection will not be among the fighting men. It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties. We have now briefly proposed a plan which we believe will save our country. It may be imperfect, but in all human probability it would give us our independence. No objection ought to outweigh it which is not weightier than independence. If it is worthy of being put in practice it ought to be mooted quickly before the people, and urged earnestly by every man who believes in its efficacy. Negroes will require much training; training will require time, and there is danger that this concession to common sense may come too late. P. R. Cleburne, major-general, commanding division; D. C. Govan, brigadier-general; John E. Murray, colonel Fifth Arkansas; G. F. Baucum, colonel Eighth Arkansas; Peter Snyder, lieutenant-colonel, commanding Sixth and Seventh Arkansas; 50 E. Warfield, lieutenant-colonel, Second Arkansas; M. P. Lowrey, brigadier-general; A. B. Hardcastle, colonel Thirty-second and Forty-fifth Mississippi; F. A. Ashford, major Sixteenth Alabama; John W. Colquitt, colonel First Arkansas; Rich. J. Person, major Third and Fifth Confederate; G. S. Deakins, major Thirty-fifth and Eighth Tennessee; J. H. Collett, captain, commanding Seventh Texas; J. H. Kelly, brigadier-general, commanding Cavalry Division. Walker-Hindman Correspondence (Cleburne Proposal) Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#24 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] HEADQUARTERS, Near Dalton, January 9, 1864. Major-General HINDMAN, Commanding Corps: GENERAL: I wrote to General Cleburne asking him for a copy of the article he read at our meeting on the night of the 2d. I informed him that I felt it my duty to forward the documents to the War Department, which I intend to do. He has sent it and avowed himself its author. Will you please inform me whether you favor the proposition and sentiments of the document in any form. A similar letter to this I shall address to each of the gentlemen who were at the meeting, and their answer will be sent with this document, for I don't like to misrepresent any one. You will oblige me by sending an answer today, as I wish to send up the article tomorrow. I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. H. T. WALKER, Major-General, Commanding Division. CONFEDERATE CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, AND NORTH GEORGIA, FROM JANUARY 1, 1864, TO FEBRUARY 29, 1864.--#2 O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXXII/2 [S# 58] HDQRS. HINDMAN'S CORPS, ARMY OF TENNESSEE, Dalton, Ga., January 9, 1864. Maj. Gen. W. H. T. WALKER, Comdg. Div. Hardee's Corps, Army of Tennessee: 51 GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of this date, and to decline complying with your request. Whenever my proper superiors see fit to propound any interrogatories to me touching matters as to which they are entitled to inquire, it will be my duty to answer directly, and I shall do so. I have no opinions to conceal and will evade no responsibility that belongs to me. But I do not choose to admit any inquisitorial rights in you. Permit me also to say that, according to my understanding, the course you propose to take conflicts with a distinct agreement of privacy among the officers consulted by General Cleburne, which agreement none of them can waive without the consent of all. I am, general, with high respect, your obedient servant, T. C. HINDMAN, Major-General. Walker's Letter to Davis (Cleburne's Proposal) Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#24 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] HEADQUARTERS DIVISION, Near Dalton, January 12, 1864. His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS, President of Confederate States: I feel it my duty as an officer of the Army to lay before the Chief Magistrate of the Southern Confederacy the within document, which was read on the night of the 2d of January, 1864, at a meeting which I attended in obedience to the following order: HEADQUARTERS HARDEE'S CORPS, Dalton, Ga., January 2, 1864. Major-General WALKER, Commanding Division : GENERAL: Lieutenant-General Hardee desires that you will meet him at General Johnston's headquarters this evening at 7 o'clock. 52 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, D. H. POOLE, Assistant Adjutant-General. Having, after the meeting adjourned, expressed my determination to apply to General Cleburne for a copy of the document to forward to the War Department, some of the gentlemen who were present at that meeting insisted upon their sentiments on so grave a subject being known to the Executive. I informed them that I would address a letter to each of the gentlemen present at the meeting, which I did. I addressed a note to General Cleburne, asking him for a copy of the document, informing him that I felt it my duty to forward it to the War Department; that should he do so I would, of course, give him a copy of the indorsement I made on it. He furnished me with a copy, and avowed himself its author. I applied to the commanding general for permission to send it to the War Department through the proper official channel, which, for reasons satisfactory to himself, he declined to do; hence the reason for it not reaching you through the official channel. The gravity of the subject, the magnitude of the issues involved, my strong convictions that the further agitation of such sentiments and propositions would ruin the efficacy of our Army and involve our cause in ruin and disgrace constitute my reasons for bringing the document before the Executive. W. H. T. WALKER, Major-General. Seddon to Johnston Correspondence (Cleburne Proposal) Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#25 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A., Richmond, Va., January 24, 1861. General JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON, Dalton, Ga. : GENERAL: Major-General Walker has communicated directly to the President copies of a memorial prepared by Major-General Cleburne, lately the subject of consultation among the generals of division in your command, as also of a letter subsequently addressed by himself to the Generals present, asking the avowal of the opinions entertained by them in relation to such memorial, with their replies. I am instructed by the President to communicate with you on the subject. He is gratified to infer, from your declining to forward officially General Walker's communication of the memorial, that you neither approved the views advocated in it, nor deemed it expedient that, after meeting as they happily did the disapproval of the council, they should have further dissemination or publicity. The motives of zeal and patriotism which have prompted General Walker's action are, however, fully appreciated, and that action is probably fortunate, as it affords an appropriate occasion to express the earnest conviction 53 of the President that the dissemination or even promulgation of such opinions under the present circumstances of the Confederacy, whether in the Army or among the people, can be productive only of discouragement, distraction, and dissension. The agitation and controversy which must spring from the presentation of such views by officers high in public confidence are to be deeply deprecated, and while no doubt or mistrust is for a moment entertained of the patriotic intents of the gallant author of the memorial, and such of his brother officers as may have favored his opinions, it is requested that you will communicate to them, as well as all others present on the occasion, the opinions, as herein expressed, of the President, and urge on them the suppression, not only of the memorial itself, but likewise of all discussion and controversy respecting or growing out of it. I would add that the measures advocated in the memorial are considered to be little appropriate for consideration in military circles, and indeed in their scope pass beyond the bounds of Confederate action, and could under our constitutional system neither be recommended by the Executive to Congress nor be entertained by that body. Such views can only jeopard among the States and people unity and harmony, when for successful co-operation and the achievement of independence both are essential. With much respect, very truly, yours, JAMES A. SEDDON, Secretary of War. Johnston To Seddon Correspondence (Cleburne Proposal) Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#25 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] DALTON, February 2, 1864. Hon. JAMES A. SEDDON, Secretary of War: SIR: I had the honor to receive the letter in which you express the views of the President in relation to the memorial of Major-General Cleburne on the 31st ultimo, and immediately transmitted his instructions in your own language to the officers concerned. None of the officers to whom the memorial was read favored the scheme; and Major General Cleburne, as soon as that appeared, voluntarily announced that he would be governed by the opinion of those officers, and put away his paper. The manner of strengthening our armies by using negroes was discussed, and no other thought practicable than that which I immediately promised to the President. I regarded this discussion as confidential, and understood it to be so agreed before the party separated. This and General Cleburne's voluntary promise prevented any apprehension in my mind of the agitation of the subject of the memorial. I have had no reason since to suppose that it made any impression. 54 Most respectfully, your obedient servant, J. E. JOHNSTON, General. Jefferson Davis's Letter to Walker (Cleburne's Proposal) Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Southwestern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, West Florida, And Northern Georgia.--#24 O.R.--SERIES I--VOLUME LII/2 [S# 110] RICHMOND, VA., January 13, 1864. General W. H. T. WALKER, Army of Tennessee, Dalton, Ga.: GENERAL: I have received your letter, with its inclosure, informing me of the propositions submitted to a meeting of the general officers on the 2d instant, and thank you for the information. Deeming it to be injurious to the public service that such a subject should be mooted, or even known to be entertained by persons possessed of the confidence and respect of the people, I have concluded that the best policy under the circumstances will be to avoid all publicity, and the Secretary of War has therefore written to General Johnston requesting him to convey to those concerned my desire that it should be kept private. If it be kept out of the public journals its ill effect will be much lessened. Very respectfully and truly, yours, JEFFERSON DAVIS. Source: Official Records of the War of the Rebellion 55 Photo Gallery Cleburne at Chickamauga www.bostickhouseart.com www.southernhistorical.com Cleburne Memorial www.geocities.com Cleburne at Franklin www.framery.com 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. http://www.wildgeeseband.com/history.html 2. Kevin Kenny. The American Irish: A History, Pearson Education, Harlow, Essex, 2000. Page 14 3. Kevin Kenny. The American Irish: A History, Pearson Education, Harlow, Essex, 2000. Page 23 4. Kevin Kenny. The American Irish: A History, Pearson Education, Harlow, Essex, 2000. Page 45 5. Kevin Kenny. The American Irish: A History, Pearson Education, Harlow, Essex, 2000. Pages 103/104 6. Private conversation with Anthony Rushing, Arkansas 7. Private conversation with Anthony Rushing, Arkansas 8. http://www.bessel.org/cwgfconf.htm 9. http://www.geocities.com/capitalguards/arsenal.html 10. http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/cleburne.htm 11. Shelby Foote. The Civil War: A Narrative; Fort Sumter to Perryville, Pimlico, London, 1992. Page 339 12. http://www.patcleburne.com/fighting_15th.htm 13. http://www.civilwarhistory.com/Kentucky%20Civil%20War%20Battle%20Rich mond%20American%20Civil%20War.htm 14. http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw36.html 15. http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw36.html 16. Peter Cozzens. The Battle of Stones River: No Better Place to Die, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1990. Page 118 17. http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw36.html 18. Shelby Foote. The Civil War: A Narrative; Fredericksburg to Meridan, Pimlico, London, 1992. Pages 170/171 19. Peter Cozzens. The Battle of Stones River: No Better Place to Die. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1990. Page 209. 20. http://civilwar.org/historyclassroom/hc_bragg.htm 21. http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/civwar/html/cw_007202_ringgoldg apg.htm 22. Bruce Catton. The Civil War, Houghton Mifflin Company by arrangement with The American Heritage Library, USA, 1987. Page 10 23. Bruce Catton. The Civil War, Houghton Mifflin Company by arrangement with The American Heritage Library, USA, 1987. Page 10 24. http://www.carter-house.org/TheBattle.htm 25. http://groups.msn.com/MasonDixonChatForum/sonsoferintheirishinthecivilwar.m snw Additional Reading Sources: Larry J. Daniel. Soldiering in the Army of the Tennessee: A Portrait of Life in a Confederate Army, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London. 57 James MacPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom. Oxford University Press Inc, New York, 1985. Robert F. Durden. The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation.. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1972. Joe H. Kirchberger. The Civil War and Reconstruction: An Eye Witness History, Facts on File Ltd, New York and Oxford, 1991 William C. Davis (ed). Touched by Fire: A Photographic Portrait of the Civil War, Volume two, Little, Brown and Co., Boston and Toronto, 1990. Peter Batty. The Divided Union, the story of the American Civil War 1861-65, Viking Press, Kent 1987. Shelby Foote. The Civil War, A narrative 3. Red River to Appomattox, The Bodley Head Ltd, London, 1991. Thomas Lawrence Connelly and Archer Jones. The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy. Louisiana University State Press, Baton Rouge, 1982. Nathaniel C. Hughes, Jr. General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1965. http://militaryhistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.eart hlink.net%2F%7Erggsibiba%2Fhtml%2Fsib%2Fsib3.htm http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb1996/n02051996_9602053.html http://members.aol.com/dlharvey/flag.htm http://www.borgerkrigen.info/7thtexas/english/7th_texas_brief_history.htm http://216.219.254.78/ http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt039.html