The four battles of Carter’s Depot

   Not long ago, I acquired a little book by Lawrence M. Jarratt entitled A Complete County by County Guide to Civil War Battles, Actions, Engagements, Skirmishes, Affairs, Reconnaissances, Expeditions, Scouts and Camps in Tennessee (1986). For Carter County, Tennessee, there are four skirmishes noted, all centering around a spot then known as Carter’s Depot or Carter’s Station, now known as the town of Watauga, Tennessee. Since Carter County’s war-time history is a big gap, this post, hopefully with several others I have written in the past couple of years, will fill in a few holes. (The town of Watauga is on the Carter-Washington County border.)

   At the time of the war, Carter’s depot was a simple stop on the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad. The line, constructed in the 1850s, was the most direct route between the lower and upper South, and it was vitally important until it was lost to the Federals in September 1863. The site had a depot, water tank, and possibly a telegraph office, with the wooden trestle sixty feet high and four hundred feet long bridging the Watauga River.[1]

   It was in November 1861 that the bridge first came under attack… almost. A group of Unionists planned to burn several bridges in east Tennessee, and while the Confederates in the area were immobilized, Federal forces would sweep in from Kentucky and capture the area. The bridge over the Watauga River at Carter’s Depot was one of the bridges targeted. However, the saboteurs found this bridge heavily guarded, and they abandoned this target to concentrate their efforts on another bridge.   Several of the bridges were burned, but the Federal forces failed to materialize and several of the bridge burners were caught and either hanged or imprisoned.[2]

   It would be a year before any serious action transpired at Carter’s Depot. In December 1862, Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Carter (US) led a cavalry raid out of east Kentucky and into east Tennessee. His goal was to break up the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad. Upon leaving Blountville, Carter sent Col. Charles J. Walker, with six companies, to capture the depot. Before arriving at the depot, Walker captured a train with several Confederates onboard, including Colonel Love. On arriving at Carter’s Depot, Walker attacked. “The enemy made a spirited resistance for a few minutes and then fled to the brush,” Walker wrote. Federal losses were 1 killed, 4 wounded. Confederates lost 12 killed, 15 or 20 wounded, and 138 captured. Walker then proceeded to burn the bridge and camp, before departing. The captured Confederate officer was Col. Robert G.A. Love, 62^nd North Carolina Troops. Confederate losses were reported as somewhere around 7 wounded, one mortally, and 114 captured, all members of the 62^nd North Carolina Troops.[3]  

   The bridge was rebuilt, and earthworks were added to protect defenders. The next series of skirmishes came in September 1863. When Confederate forces stripped defenders from east Tennessee to support Braxton Bragg and the Army of Tennessee during the Chickamauga campaign, there was a void left in the area, a void quickly filled by Federal troops from Kentucky. Federal soldiers drove east, trying to secure as much territory as possible. Federal artillery bombarded Confederate defenders at Carter’s Depot on September 21 and 22. Flanked out of their entrenchments, the Confederates retreated to Zollicoffer, burning the bridge over the Watauga River at Carter’s Depot as they left.  [4]

   Much of East Tennessee, from Carter’ Depot to Knoxville, became a no-man’s land for the rest of the war. There were times when  the Federals were in possession of Greeneville, and Longstreet’s divisions wintered near Rogersville in early 1864, but the area was susceptible to frequent raids by Union troops, Confederate troops, and bands of dissidents.

   Once the Federals returned west toward Knoxville, Confederate forces again occupied the defenses around Carter’s Depot. In April 1864, Federal commander Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield was ordered to destroy the bridges about Bull’s Gap. While Carter’s Depot was not specifically mentioned in Federal orders, the bridges over the Watauga were. A combined cavalry and infantry force set out from Bull’s Gap on April 24. On April 27, Schofield reported that “the rebels destroyed the bridge [Watauga] after being driven across it by our cavalry.” The event was obviously, for a short time, a pretty hot skirmish, as Federal losses were reported as three killed and eighteen wounded. However, the bridge was too high to be forded. Confederate General Simon Buckner reported to Richmond on April 26 that skirmishing had started the day before at Carter’s Depot. Buckner, however, felt that if the Federal attack was too large, the Confederate defenders at Carter’s Depot should fall back to Zollicoffer. However, Buckner ordered the area commander to hold Carter’s Depot if possible.[5]

Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn

   In September 1864 came Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge’s (US) raid into the area. On September 30, Brig. Gen. Jacob Ammem (US) led a force from Jonesborough toward Carter’s Depot. The Federals attacked, driving many of the Confederate defenders from their entrenchments and back across the river. The next morning, with artillery posted “advantageously,” the Federals attacked again, driving away the remaining defenders. Federal losses were reported as four wounded. The Federals reported that the Confederate defenders were under the command of Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn (CS). Vaughn’s brigade was composed of the 16^th Georgia Battalion, the 1^st, 3^rd, 31^st/39^th, 43^rd, 5^th, 60^th, 61^st, 62^nd Tennessee Infantry regiments (mostly mounted), and the 12^th and 16^th Tennessee Battalions. It can be assumed that some of these regiments or men were present during the skirmishing at the end of September and beginning of September.[6]

   There are undoubtedly other skirmishes that took place. As Stoneman’s forces moved through in late March 1865, did the Confederate defenders simply fall back to Zollicoffer or Bristol? What else has escaped the attention of the historian? Jarrett, in his “complete” county guide to the Civil War in Tennessee, only lists dates and sources. No further details. This is one geographical area that needs to be fleshed out a little more.

By the way, if you are interested in the war in east Tennessee and Western North Carolina, please check out my Kirk’s Civil War Raids Along the Blue Ridge.

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[1] Piston, Carter’s Raid, 51.

[2] Judd, The Bridge Burners, 50.

[3] Official Records, Vol. 20, 1:93-94; Jordan, North Carolina Troops, 15:7.

[4] Official Records, Vol. 30, 2:605, 645.

[5] Official Records Vol. 32, 3:475, 533, 831, 835.

[6] Official Records, Vol. 39, 2:558-59; 3:46; 3:907.

The Crab Orchard (Tennessee) and the Civil War

   
There were several places that bore the name of Crab Orchard during the Civil War. Crab Orchard, Kentucky, was probably the most famous, but for this post, we are going to look at Crab Orchard, Carter County, Tennessee. The Crab Orchard in Carter County, geographically speaking, is a rugged area. Near the North Carolina border, the area is split by the Doe River Gorge. It is rough place, but for those looking for hide out and escape, an ideal location. One veteran described it as a “most rugged country…”[1]

   Crab Orchard became a haven for Unionists and dissidents during the war. The area is rough, running through the Doe River Gorge. Nathaniel G. Taylor, a Carter County native who had served in the US House in 1854-1855, and had been outspoken in his defense of the Union during the 1860 election, reportedly fled to the Crab Orchard area following the secession of Tennessee. He was being guarded by 100 Union men. [2]

Crab Orchard section of East Tennessee. 

    After the bridge-burning episode in East Tennessee in November 1861, many of the bridge burners fled to the Crab Orchard area after Federal soldiers failed to support the activities of the local firebugs. Confederate soldiers chased the Unionists for a time, but did not enter the Crab Orchard area. (Judd, The Bridge Burners) An article in a Nashville newspaper reported at the end of November that many of the bridge burners were still in the area: “Some spasms of the rebellion yet exist on the upper borders of the Buffalo, in the Limestone Cove, and the Crab Orchard…”[3]

   William Penland, a sergeant in the 6^th North Carolina Cavalry, was stationed at Mount Taylor, in the Carter County area. He wrote home on January 6, 1863, that he had been on a raid and the rumor was that the “tories in the crabb orchard that was a going to cutt us off if the Yankees whipped us and we had to retreat[.]” Wilson wrote that his command journeyed into the area, but found “none[.]”[4]

   Possibly the biggest movement of troops through the area came in June 1864, when Capt. George W. Kirk moved from Broylesville (then in Carter County), through the area into North Carolina. Kirk was heading to Camp Vance, in Burke County, in an attempt to capture a train to take his raiders east to destroy the bridge over the Yadkin River on the border of Rowan and Davidson Counties. While Kirk was able to capture the camp, along with 200 prisoners, he failed in taking a waiting train at the depot nearby and retreated back into Tennessee, probably passing through Crab Orchard once again.[5]

   North Carolina home guard forces, under Major Harvey Bingham, maneuvered toward the southern end of the Crab Orchard area in October 1864. A group of nine robbed several families in the Bethel community of Watauga County before heading back to Tennessee. Bingham followed with portions of the 11^th Battalion North Carolina Home Guard just over the Tennessee line, capturing one man and driving “off some beef cattle” before heading back to his base.[6] 

Doe River Gorge. 

  The Crab Orchard was also a stop on a local version of the underground railroad, funneling escaped prisoners and dissidents out of the Carolinas and into Tennessee. Keith Blalock, Harrison Church, and Jim Hartley were all pilots on this route, moving from Banner’s Elk through Crab Orchard and then toward Greenville (or wherever Federal lines happen to be holding at that moment).  When Blalock was wounded late in the war while raiding a farm in Caldwell County, a group of fifteen to twenty men came to Banner’s Elk and rescued him, taking Blalock to convalesce at the home of David Stout at Crab Orchard.[7] When George W. Kirk followed Maj. Gen. Stoneman’s Cavalry raiders into North Carolina in March-April 1865, they supposedly moved via Crab Orchard and Banner’s Elk before arriving in Boone.[8]

   This small glimpse of the war inside the Crab Orchard community is just that – a small glimpse. There were many events that took place inside this community that have escaped the pen of the historian and are now lost to history. In Scott and Angel’s history of the 13^th Tennessee Cavalry (US), they write of members of Thomas’s Legion roaming in the area, spreading “terror and dismay wherever they went.” Scott and Angel mention that a man named Andrew Buck “was taken out and hanged until he was black in the face by Walters to make him tell where his sons were concealed.” Outside of saying that Walters was “Captain Walters” from Georgia, who was in Carter County in May 1863, we don’t actually know who this is. Maybe in time we can dig out a few more of these stories and preserve this piece of history.[9] 

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[1] Scott and Angel, History of the 13^th Regiment Tennessee Vol. Cavalry, 380.

[2] Daily Nashville Patriot, August 25, 1861.

[3] Nashville Union and American, December 4, 1861.

[4] http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com/blind_pig_the_acorn/2010/01/civil-war-letters.html

[5] Hardy, Kirk’s Civil Wars Along the Blue Ridge, 98-108.

[6] Hardy, Watauga County, North Carolina, in the Civil War, 47.

[7] Oshnock, “The Isolation Factor,” 86.

[8] Arthur, Western North Carolina, 626.

[9] Scott and Angel, History of the 13^th Regiment Tennessee Vol. Cavalry, 380-382.

Court packing, 1860s style

   In February 1861, two pro-secession state senators from western North Carolina, Marcus Erwin and W. W. Avery, issued an address to the people of their districts. The address lamented the election of the “black Republicans,” and with the secession of Southern states, the loss of seats (and power) in the halls of Congress for the Southern slave-owning states that remained. Then, the pair turned their attention to courts: “The Supreme Court is the only refuge left us. But that will not avail us. Because that court construed the Constitution so as to protect the rights and property of southern men, the Black Republicans have cursed it, and vowed to destroy its present organization. Mr. Seward, who has accepted the principal post in Mr. Lincoln’s cabinet, and who will be the governing and directing spirit of his administration, has declared that the Supreme Court must be reconstructed on account of its decision in favor of the South, in the Dred Scott case. That means that the first measure of Mr. Lincoln’s administration will be to pass a law organizing the court in such a way as to enable them to appoint Black Republican judges enough to control the court against the South, and to reverse all its previous decisions in favor of the South.”[1]

   The important person in the debate was William H. Seward. A former two-term New York Governor, Seward was serving his second term as a United States Senator when the Dred Scott v. Sandford case was decided upon in 1857. In March 1858, Seward, in a speech in the Senate, decried the court’s decision. The court could reverse its decision, or Congress could “reorganize the Court, and thus reform its political sentiments and practices, and bring them into harmony with the Constitution and the laws of nature.”[2] President Buchanan was angry, and Chief Justice Roger Taney later told a friend that had Seward won the presidency instead of Lincoln, Taney would have refused to administer the oath to the new president.[3] Others agreed with Seward. Zachariah Chandler of Michigan found the Dred Scott ruling “monstrous.” The Republican party meant to “annul the Dred Scott decision, the stump speech of Taney…” and reorganize the Supreme Court.[4]

   Many in Washington, D.C., were alarmed by Seward’s proclamation. D.Q.C. Lamar, serving the people of Mississippi in the U.S. House, stated he heard Seward’s speech in person. Lamar believed that once the Republicans assumed power, the Supreme Court would be remodeled “in order that its decisions should no longer confirm to us what we believe to be the constitutional rights of the South.” As Seward spoke, as he “uttered this atrocious sentiment, his form seemed to dilate, his pale, thin face, furrowed by the lines of thought and evil passions, kindled with malignant triumph, and his eye slowed and glared upon southern Senators as though the fires of hell were burning in his heart.”[5]  Others in Congress spoke out in favor of the court, denouncing the Republicans. These included senators Jefferson Davis-Mississippi; Judah P. Benjamin-Louisiana; Stephen Douglas-Illinois; James A. Stewart-Maryland; George E. Pugh-Ohio; and, Joseph Lane-Oregon.[6]

   The news of Seward’s proposal to remake the court made its rounds across the South in 1860. It was an election year, and many felt Seward would get the nod for the Republican presidential candidacy. One editor in Louisiana told his readership that Seward had “announced that his party would soon reorganize the Supreme Court in such a manner as to avoid disagreeable decisions…”[7] The Texas Republican considered Seward an “arch Tallyrand” declaring that the Supreme Court had to be reorganized.[8] The Times-Picayune noted in April 1860 that Roscoe Conkling was on the floor of the US House calling for the “reorganization of the Supreme Court,” as “one of the auspicious promises of the Republican victory” in the coming election. [9] In Nashville, Tennessee, the day before the election, one speaker told the crowd that “The North is bent on abolishing slavery by revising the Supreme Court and then reversing the Dred Scott Decision…”[10]

US Supreme Court, ca.1864 (Wikimedia Commons)

   Once the election was over, the Republicans gained the presidency, and a Republican-led coalition controlled the House, while the Democrat’s control of the Senate was five seats less. As states considered secession, the idea of a reorganized court haunted many an editor. “What, then, becomes of this much-vaunted bulwark of Sothern constitutional rights?” a Louisiana editor asked. “The Supreme Court will become an Abolition Court, and will give judicial sanction and authority to whatever oppressions and outrages may be perpetrated upon the South by an Abolition Congress and an Abolition president!”[11] The Republican Banner told its readership that the new administration planned to fill the Supreme Court with “his [Lincoln] creatures, as vacancies may occur from death or otherwise… If vacancies should occur too slowly in the Supreme Court, and he should have a majority in both Houses of Congress, he might even add to its number, so as to give his party a majority…”[12] The Richmond Enquirer noted the same. Citing a speech that Seward gave at the Cooper Institute in New York in November, Seward planned to set the wheels in motion to reconstruct the Supreme Court in short time.[13]

    Associate Justice John McLean died in April 1861, giving Lincoln the opportunity for his first nomination. For those border states still in the Union, there was cause for great alarm. “The vacancy in the supreme court cannot be filled unto the next session of Congress. It is not impossible an effort will be made then to reorganize judicial districts,” the Memphis Daily Argus informed its readers.[14]

   Eventually, Lincoln did appoint five new justices to vacancies, and Congress did, in the summer of 1862, redraw the boundaries of the districts, compressing the five Southern districts into two. In March 1863, Congress went further, creating a tenth district, thus adding a tenth justice to the bench (this seat was abolished in 1869). Two of Lincoln’s nominations, Salmon P. Chase and Samuel F. Miller, were confirmed the same day they were nominated. Noah H. Swayne’s confirmation took three days, Stephen J. Field’s took four days, and David Davis’s confirmation took seven days. In the end, William H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln were able to reorganize the Supreme Court in a way that benefited their political party.[15]

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[1] Weekly State Journal,  February 20, 1861.

[2] The Works of William H. Seward, 4:594-95.

[3] Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, 172.

[4] “Acquisition of Cuba. Speech of Hon. Zachariah Chandler, of Michigan, in the Senate of the United States, February 17, 1859,” 5.

[5] Congressional Globe, quoted in Bancroff, The Life of William H. Seward, 1:504.

[6] Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 2:329.

[7]  Sugar Planter January 21, 1860.

[8] The Texas Republican, February 11, 1860.

[9] The Times-Picayune April 26, 1860.

[10] Nashville Union and American, November 4, 1860.

[11] The New Orleans Crescent, November 21, 1860.

[12] Republican Banner, November 27, 1860.

[13] Richmond Enquirer, November 13, 1860.

[14] Memphis Daily Argus, April 4, 1861.

[15]  https://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/the-first-court-packing-plan/

The Strange Cases of William Marsh, Carter County, Tennessee

Louis Brown, in his book on the Salisbury Prison, has a long list of civilian prisoners incarcerated at the North Carolina stockade. One of those men listed is William Marsh. In 1860, Marsh was living in Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, working as a hatter. Marsh was twenty-four years old, married to Ellen, with two children. They were all born in Virginia. His personal estate was only worth $50, so being a hatter was obviously not a lucrative job in mid-nineteenth-century Elizabethton.

In 1864, Marsh wrote Andrew Johnson, then serving as a representative of Tennessee in the United States Senate, explaining that he was once again “under the Stars & Stripes,” albeit by “peculiar circumstances.” Marsh explained that he was a friend of Dan Stover, took an active part of the 1860 presidential election, and was a member of the East Tennessee Convention. In September 1861, he visited his parents in Virginia, where he was arrested for disloyalty. He was first confined in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and then sent to the prison in Salisbury. Over the next nine months, Confederate officials repeatedly offered Marsh the opportunity to take the Oath, which he declined, until he felt he was “compelled to take it to save life as my constitution was fast giving way under the treatment received.” In July [1864?], Marsh stated he was “arrested” and sent to a regiment in John C. Breckinridge’s division. When he arrived with his regiment, Marsh was sick, and left at a house, “confined to my room with a fever.” He was afraid that once the troops returned, he would be arrested again, and wanted Johnson to do something to keep him out of the Confederate army. The letter is dated September 24, 1864, Valley of Virginia.

At some point, it appears that Marsh was captured by Federal forces. In October 1864, he was discharged from the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. He apparently got a job working at the wharf on G Street in Washington, D.C. It seems, maybe in his excitement over being released from confinement, he indulged a little too much one evening, and his employer found that he had dropped his copy of his Oath of Allegiance to the Confederacy. Marsh’s boss had hired Marsh, “a Confederate refugee… through sympathy.” The official wrote that Marsh swore he had not taken such an Oath (prior to losing his Oath). What happened after that point in time is unknown. [1]

There is a little more to story. William Marsh’s name appears on a list of “Union Men Confined at Salisbury, N.C.” in the New York Tribune, July 29, 1862. While there is no information with this article, there is a letter, in the Official Records, from Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth (US), written on August 10, 1862, stating that an article from the New York Tribune was being enclosed, and that Wadsworth was holding thirty Confederate citizens from the area between Fredericksburg and Washington, D.C., “as hostages.” [2]

What became of William Marsh? It seems that he hired himself as a substitute for John C. Wellbanks, and was mustered into Company C, 1^st Delaware Infantry. He was mustered in as a private on December 24, 1864, then promoted to sergeant on January 24, 1865. In June, he was promoted to second lieutenant and transferred to Company F. Marsh was mustered out of service on July 12, 1865.  Marsh apparently did not return to East Tennessee. He is listed on the 1870 US Census as a resident of Fort Chiswell, Wythe County, Virginia. It appears that his first wife, Ellen, passed in the previous decade. He was, in 1870, married to Susan V. Marsh and had four children at home. In 1880, he was in Surry County, North Carolina. According to a family history chart on Ancestry, William Marsh died on April 2, 1893, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and he was buried in the Bob Marsh Cemetery, Grayson County, Virginia.

Civilians arrested by the Confederate government for disloyalty is a seldom discussed topic. Mark Neely Jr., writes that there were at least 4,108 political prisoners arrested during the war.[3] It would be interesting to find additional information on Marsh, namely, what led to his arrest. Maybe those records will turn up one day.

 

 

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[1] Case Files of Investigations by Levi C. Turner and Lafayette C. Baker, 1861-1866.M797, Record Group 94, NARA. Some of Marsh’s records were microfilmed with those of Adam Mohr.

[2] Official Records, Series 2, volume 4, 368.

[3] Neely, Southern Rights, 1.

Battle of the Bands

5th Virginia Infantry band
(Military Images, 1983)

   Music has always played an important part of military life, from the drums that woke them up in the morning or the brass bands that serenaded the soldiers off to sleep. As Robert E. Lee once famously said: “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.”[1] Musicians were not often under fire, but they did wage, on occasion, their own battles of the bands against the tooters on the other side.

   One such event took place on the eve of the battle of Murfreesboro (Stone’s River). It was December 30, 1862. Skirmishers had plied their deadly trade that day, as the armies moved into position. That night, the bands began to play. A Southern band struck up “Bonny Blue Flag,” which was answered by “Hail, Columbia,” and then “Yankee Doodle.” After the dueling went on for some time, one band began to play the haunting strains of “Home, Sweet Home,” with bands on each side joining in. “We could hear the sweet refrain as it died away on the cool frost air,” recalled a member of the 19^th Tennessee Infantry. This scene would be played out in different camps throughout the war.[2]  

   Just a couple of weeks earlier, a similar event occurred on the banks of the Rappahannock River, near Fredericksburg in Virginia. A Confederate band played “Dixie,” followed by a Union band playing “John Brown’s Body.” Then came “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After a few moments of silence, a lone Federal bugler played the notes of “Home, Sweet Home.”[3]

   On May 2, 1863, as the battle of Chancellorsville got underway, Confederate artillery under Jubal Early dueled with Federals. One Federal officer noted that that during the bombardment “from the rebel lines came the clear notes of a band playing the air of ‘Dixie,’ a favorite tune with the Confederates. Three or four times they played it through, and then stopped. In a moment, a band in our own army commenced the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”[4]

   During the siege of Vicksburg, the commander of Waul’s Legion (Texas) instructed E. W. Krause to play for the men, trying to raise their spirits. The Legion band began to play “in a very patriotic air ‘Dixie,’” to which a Federal band responded with “a very rude and unharmonious, double Forte accompaniment.” Federal artillery lent their music, “directed at the impudent bank in which we were sheltering.” Krause wrote that the practice was continued throughout the siege.[5]

   During much of 1864, the armies were close to each other. At daylight on July 4, Federal bands outside Petersburg shattered the early morning stillness with “a perfect hurricane of national airs.” The Confederate bands soon replied, with each side cheering their tunes, while groaning at those of the enemy. “After sundown our brass bands and those of the enemy indulged in a musical duel,” wrote a member of the Donaldsonville Artillery. 6 In the outskirts of Atlanta, on August 14, Washington Ives, of the 4^th Florida Infantry, recalled the “The Bands on both sides play every evening and as a band on either side plays, the partizans begin to yell. Three nights ago after the Fed. & Reb. had played several times for each other the troops on both sides began yelling. . . during which a great many men picked up their guns and accoutrements and jumped into the fortifications thinking the enemy was going to charge us.” [7]

   There are undoubtedly scores of other accounts and admittedly, these few jottings just scratch the surface. These tunes inspired men, as demonstrated by the account of the soldier in the 4^th Florida. The bands could be even more important in combat. Making music and making war might seem incompatible. In the end, the music played in camp by bands South and North had a profound impact not just in the moment, but for generations.

  

[1] Clark, NC Troops, 2:399.

[2] Daniel, Battle of Stones River, 68.

[3] Barton and Logue, The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, 126.

[4] Mackowski and White, Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front,

[5] Woodworth and Grear, The Vicksburg Assaults, May 19-22, 1863, 86

[6] Greene, A Campaign of Giants – The Battle for Petersburg, 1:345

[7] Sheppard, By the Noble Baring of Her Sons, 194.