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                  SKETCH
                  OF THE
          FIRST KENTUCKY BRIGADE


                  BY ITS
      ADJUTANT GENERAL, G. B. HODGE.


              FRANKFORT, KY.
  PRINTED AT THE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFICE.
            MAJOR & JOHNSTON.
                  1874.




                    TO
      GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE,
           ITS NOBLE COMMANDER,
                  TO THE
            GALLANT SURVIVORS,
                AND TO THE
       MEMORY OF THE IMMORTAL DEAD
             OF THE BRIGADE,
               THIS SKETCH
       IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




SKETCH OF THE 1ST KENTUCKY BRIGADE.


In the general history which will go down to posterity of such immense
bodies of men as were gathered under the banners of the Confederate
States of America, it is not likely that more than a brief and cursory
reference can or will be made to the services of so small a force as
composed the First Kentucky Brigade. Yet the anomalous position which
it occupied, in regard to the revolution, in having revolted against
both State and Federal authority, exiling itself from home, from
fortune, from kindred, and from friends--abandoning everything which
makes life desirable, save honor--gave it an individuality which
cannot fail to attract the attention of the calm student, who, in
coming years, traces the progress of the mighty social convulsion in
which it acted no ignoble part. The State, too, from which it came,
whatever may be its destiny or its ultimate fate, will remember, with
melancholy and mournful interest, not, perhaps, unmingled with
remorse, the career of that gallant band of men, who, of all the
thousands in its borders inheriting the proud name and lofty fame of
Kentuckians, stood forth fearlessly by deeds to express the sentiments
of an undoubted majority of her people--disapprobation of wrong and
tyranny. Children now in their cradles, youths as yet unborn, will
inquire, with an earnest eagerness which volumes of recital cannot
satisfy, how their countrymen demeaned themselves in the fierce ordeal
which they had elected as the test of their patriotism; how they bore
themselves on the march and in the bivouac; how in the trials of the
long and sad retreat; how amid the wild carnage of the stricken field.
Fair daughters of the State will oftentimes, even amid the rigid
censorship which forbids utterance of words, love to come in thought
and linger about the lonely graves where the men of the Kentucky
Brigade sleep, wrapped in no winding-sheets save their battle-clothes,
beneath no monuments save the trees of the forest, torn and mutilated
by the iron storm, in which the slumberers met death. It has seemed to
me not improper, therefore, that the story should be told by one
possessing peculiar facilities for acquiring knowledge of the
movements of detached portions of the force, and who, in the capacity
of a staff officer, under the directions of its General, issued every
order and participated in every movement of the brigade, who had not
only the opportunity but the desire to do justice to all who composed
it, from him who bore worthily the truncheon of the General, to those
who not less worthily in their places bore their muskets as privates.
A deep interest will always be felt in the history of the effort which
was made, by men strong in their faith in the correctness of
republican forms of government, notwithstanding the tyranny which the
great experiment in the United States had culminated in, to
reconstruct from the shattered fragments of free institutions upon
which the armies of the Federal power were trampling, a social and
political fabric, under the shelter of which they and their posterity
might enjoy the rights of freemen. When the first seven Southern
States seceded, and President Lincoln took the initial steps to coerce
them, the Legislature of Kentucky, by an almost unanimous vote of the
House of Representatives, declared that any attempt to do so by
marching troops over her soil would be resisted to the last extremity.
The Governor had refused to respond to the call of the Executive for
troops for this purpose. The Legislature approved his course. But here
unanimity ceased; effort after effort was made in the Legislature to
provide for the call of a sovereignty convention. The majority
steadily resisted it. As a compromise, the neutrality of the State was
assumed, acquiesced in by the sympathizers with the North because they
intended to violate it when the occasion was ripe; acquiesced in by
the Southern men because, while their impulses all prompted them to
make common cause with their Southern brethren, they believed that the
neutrality of the State, in presenting an effective barrier of seven
hundred miles of frontier between the South and invasion, offered her
more efficient assistance than the most active co-operation could have
done. The Legislature adjourned; the canvass commenced for a new
General Assembly; delegates were elected, pledged to strict
neutrality; the Northern sympathizers had been vigorous, active, and
energetic