Free The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home by William C. Davis

them back. At almost this same instant he received a request from Forrest to assist in another attempt to take the federal battery.
    Hanson marched his regiment forward, across their line of defenses,and down the slope to a ravine where Forrest awaited. Here his two detached companies rejoined him, and here Hanson told the men, “Hold your fire until at close quarters!” He would depend upon the bayonet if possible. Ahead of them lay 200 yards of open ground to cross before they reached the wood in which the enemy battery and its infantry supports sheltered. Forrest would charge the battery, Hanson the infantry.
    Steady, as if on parade, the Kentuckians moved forward. They took casualties. Lieutenant William Hill of Company F saw a cannon ball strike the ground in front of him and “come bounding along like a rabbit.” It hit him in the knee. Though removed to the field hospital, he died that night. Lieutenant Ed Keene took a mortal wound and was sent back. Hanson lost by his count fifty men in crossing that open space, yet not a man fired his rifle until they reached the woods. Then the Orphans poured forth a volley, while Forrest engaged hand-to-hand for the battery. When the Kentuckians got within forty yards of the Federals, the bluecoats abandoned their position and their artillery. Now Hanson saw Graves bring his battery forward to their support. The young artillerist took over the splendid captured cannon, and “Old Flintlock” led his regiment forward again several hundred yards. The enemy had retired completely, opening to them a road that led to the federal flanks and rear, and both Hanson and Forrest saw the worth of what they had taken. While they prepared to hold what they felt might be a pivotal position, orders came from Pillow directing them to return to their trenches on the right of the line. Grant, too, had been busy. 10
    While Buckner attacked the federal center, Grant sent part of his own Army against the right of the Confederate line, the very area Hanson had left. Now, as “Bench-leg” and his rowdy Orphans returned to the right, they found the enemy advancing. He sent six companies running for the advance rifle pits, hoping to slow the Federals long enough for him to reoccupy the trenches with his remaining companies. A few of the men actually got into their rifle pits before the enemy, but they were too few. After a brief but hot firefight, the Confederates retreated. The casualties, by now, about 4 P.M. , were substantial. Company B lost its captain, Ed Keene, early in the fight. Now it was led by the captain of Company G, Ed Spears, even though he was hit and carrying his arm in a sling. Yet Spears, like the rest of the Kentuckians, abandoned the rifle pits to the enemy.
    Hanson re-formed the regiment somewhat, and then three times assaulted the trenches. Spears, wound and all, “seemed ready, indeed anxious,” as one man of his company put it, “to lead us in a bayonet charge to drive the enemy out of the works which they had taken from us.” The best that the Kentuckians could accomplish was to drive the Federals out of the trenches briefly, but the bluecoats only stopped on the other side of the earth rampart thrown up in front of the trenches, where they turned and used the rampart as a breastwork. Finally Hanson and another regiment, the 18th Tennessee, withdrew in some confusion. They rallied on the rear crest of the hill, though much intermingled, when Buckner arrived and ordered them into line, ignoring company or regimental organization. Indeed, one who was there said Buckner “stood where men were falling around him as calm as on review.” Hanson, too, steadied the men by his example. Despite their situation, darkness approaching, the enemy in possession of his trenches, and the men exhausted, he had time to be pleased with his regiment. “The entire regiment did all I expected of them,” he would tell his wife in a few weeks, “and that you know was a great