re: Civil war ancestors/family stories

But I'm not lying about that. The Orphan Brigade and the 1stMissouri Brigade were regarded as the two best brigades in the west. On the confederate side. While Stonewalls brigade and Hood's Texans were considered the best in the east. This is verified historical fact.


Here....


In 120 days, from Dalton through the final days before Atlanta, the Orphans suffered the almost unbelievable losses of 123%. From Dalton, Georgia, when the brigade withdrew toward Atlanta with Sherman’s legions pressuring their rear and when the command boasted 1,512 officers and men strong, to Jonesboro, the Orphan Brigade recorded 1,860 cases of death and wounds, 23% more than there were men in those 5 peerless regiments! Men would be wounded, return to the brigade only to be wounded again and again, or killed. Less than 50 men were reported to have passed through the campaign without a wound. The rolls record only 10 men deserted their ranks in the 120 day campaign. The Battles of Dalton, Resaca, Pine Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Intrenchment Creek and Jonesboro are written in red with the blood of those Kentuckians.

Wrote historian Nathaniel S. Shaler,

“A search into the history of warlike exploits has failed to show me any endurance to the worst trials of war surpassing this. The men of this campaign were at each stage of their retreat going farther from their firesides. It is easy for men to bear great trials under circumstances of victory. Soldiers of ordinary goodness will stand several defeats; but to endure the despair which such adverse conditions bring for a hundred days demands a moral and physical patience which, so far as I have learned, has never been excelled in any other army.”[16]


Dying in the Last Ditch -- A good deal was heard about the determination of Southern men to die in the last ditch rather than submit to Northern domination; but the serious work of four years stopped a little (although comparatively little) short of this dire consummation. It is not extravagant to claim, however, that the main body of men who lived and fought till the struggle seemed to be hopeless would have gone to this extremity at the call of leaders whom they really trusted. The temper of the Kentucky soldiers during the last days, taken in conjunction with the fact that, several times before, they had refused to give ground without orders when imminent destruction stared them in the face, warrants the assertion that if, like Leonidas and his little band, they had been posted with orders to "guard the pass" against overwhelming odds, live or die, there would have been a virtual repetition of the old story that "none were left to tell the tale."




The brigade was formed with 5000 volunteers. By the end of the war, only 900 men remained as part of a mounted unit in the Carolina campaign, and yet they all passionately protested the inevitable surrender. They fought in just about every major battle in the west. From 1861 to 1865.