First Sabre Charge

First Sabre Charge, Lebanon, Tennessee

Our First Fight with Morgan

At two a.m., on the third of May, the bugle sounded “To horse.” Each man was provided with two days’ rations, and forty rounds of ammunition. In a few hours the regiment was in the saddle, and at daybreak wheeled into line in front of Dumont’s head-quarters.

The general was in possession of information that Morgan and Wood with eight hundred mounted men were scouring the country in the neighborhood of Murfreesboro. The general led the column in person, moving toward Murfreesboro by forced march; and being reinforced at Lavergne by detachments of the First and Fourth Kentucky cavalry, we pushed on to Murfreesboro, thirty-five miles, where we encamped for the night. Morgan’s command was encamped only three miles southeast of Murfreesboro. Next morning, Sunday, Morgan moved by a circuitous route to Lebanon, the county seat of Wilson county, thirty miles northeast of Murfreesboro. Our scouts reported that he was moving upon Shelbyville. Dumont ordered a rapid reconnaissance I that direction. After a fruitless search of nine miles the mistake was discovered, the column counter-marched, and headed for Lebanon in hot pursuit of the enemy.

Sunday night we halted on the pike eight miles south of Lebanon. We held our horses by the rein, and slept a few hours on the broad side of a fence-rail. At four a.m., the order was passed quietly along the line to mount. The column moved slowly, until the advance struck the enemy’s pickets; then the command was given to keep o the heels of the pickets. Our advance charged into town only a few rods behind; but they were received by a volley from the Court House, and buildings occupied by the enemy, so that they were speedily hurled back upon the main column, losing one man killed and several wounded.

The weather was anything but pleasant for the work in hand. It was cold, and a drizzling rain was falling. Our hands and arms were so benumbed that it took some time to limber up. There was no time to parley. Every minute lost at this point was so much gain to the enemy. The bloody “Seventh” was ordered to lead the charge. With sabers flashing in air we galloped through the center of the town, expecting to carve the enemy right and left; but after passing once through the gauntlet of fire from both sides of the street, we discovered that the sabre was a harmless weapon in that kind of a fight, so we began to unlimber our carbines and revolvers, and in the subsequent charges we exchanged volleys with the enemy in their various hiding places. The court-house, hotels, blacksmith shops, and many of the private houses, were full of armed men. During this street fight in the early dawn, Morgan was trying to make his escape. With three hundred picked men he determined to cut his way out. General Dumont discovered his intention in time to head his column, by leading the “Seventh” down a back alley and striking the road going north, just as Morgan was passing at the head of his column. His men held their fire, and passed by the head of our column as friends. Their appearance was so much like Wolford’s cavalry, that we mistook them for our own men.

Repeatedly the cry of the officers was heard, “Don’t shoot; they are our own men.” But it did not take long to dispel this delusion. When the rear of Morgan’s column came up, and we saw the cornmeal sacks strapped on the saddles, and the grey-coats mounted on mules, we were no longer in doubt as to where they belonged. And immediately the Colonel ordered a charge with drawn swords. Company “C” was first, and “E” second. The head of our column at once penetrated the rear of Morgan’s command. In a running fight of eighteen miles, several hundred prisoners were captured, heads were cut, horses were shot, men were injured by horses falling, and trampled under foot by the rushing cavalcade.

An Irishman in Company “E” swung his sword over the heads of the retreating fugitives, and yelling in his native brogue, “Will ye come into the Union now?” and seeing no signs of immediate surrender, he hurled at them with Herculean strokes, and knocked them right and left, saying, “I’ll make ye’s come into the Union.” For four years this irrepressible Hibernian passed unscathed through the thickest of every fight, and our “Pat” never heard the last of his “knocking the ‘Rebs’ into the Union.”

In the midst of the running fight, a few miles from town, Captain Dartt’s horse fell over a mule lying in the road, pitching the rider to one side, and regaining his feet, sped like an arrow to the front of the retreating column. Morgan seeing this fleet-footed and riderless steed, leaped from his black pacer into the saddle of the frightened bay, leaving his favorite mare bare-footed and limping in the hands of his pursuers, and followed by a squad of sixteen men, he galloped to the banks of the Cumberland, boarded a flat-boat, abandoned all the horses except the captured bay, and when our advance came to the river, Morgan and his sixteen men stepped out of the boat on the farther shore, hurriedly leading up the bank the disloyal horse that had swam the river; and under a sharp volley of carbine shots, the notorious raider and his party disappeared in the thick underbrush.

While the “Seventh” was thus dealing out its sabre-strokes on Morgan’s retreating column, sixty-five Confederates, having secreted themselves in Odd Fellows’ Hall, unexpectedly opened fire upon a small force under Colonel Duffield, who were left I town to care for the wounded. Having rallied his men, Colonel Duffield advanced, under cover of the house, to close range, and by a well-directed fire compelled the enemy to surrender. Among this party were six commissioned officers. At the close of this fight, General Dumont sent the following dispatch from Lebanon to the “Nashville Union” of May 7, 1862:

“I surprised and attacked the enemy under Colonels Morgan and Wood this morning (May 5, 1862), at four o’clock, at this place (Lebanon, Tennessee), and after a hard-fought battle of one hour and a half, and a running fight of eighteen miles in pursuit, achieved a complete and substantial victory. My force was about six hundred, composed of Col. Wynkoop’s Seventh Pennsylvania and detachments of the First and Fourth Kentucky Cavalry. That of the enemy, as stated by himself, was upwards of eight hundred; besides which, the disloyal inhabitants, not in the army, opened a murderous fire upon our soldiers from their houses, and kept it up until all the organized forces of the enemy had fled or were captured. The forces on either side were exclusively mounted. I captured about two hundred prisoners, among whom is Lieut. Col. Wood, late of the United States Army, three captains, four lieutenants, one hundred and fifty horses, and one hundred stand of arms. Our killed will not exceed six, and our wounded, twenty-five. Colonels Smith and Wolford were slightly wounded. Major Given of the Seventh Pennsylvania, fell into the hands of the enemy during the street fight, by mistaking them for our troops. In this little affair, intrepidity and personal daring were conspicuous throughout.”

Four commissioned officers in the “Seventh” were wounded by bullets and sabre thrusts. Adjutant Mosier was wounded in the arm, and had twenty bullet holes through his rubber dolman. Lieutenant Taylor had a sabre-cut across his forehead.

My company had only one man killed, Adam Winkleblech. He was a good soldier, but a man of very peculiar religious views. He had frequently entertained his bunk-mates with his strange and fanciful expositions of Scripture. His favorite text was the seventh verse of the ninety-first psalm: “A thousand shall fall at they side, and ten thousand at they right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.”

This security he fancied for himself, and seemed to think that no bullet was moulded for him, and that he would be the last to fall. But how often, in the unfolding of Providence, “the last shall be first!”

A few others of our company were slightly wounded. A number of horses were shot. On the first charge through town, mine received a shot in the flank. He held the bit between his teeth and sprang forward as if maddened by the scent of powder. He was a white-faced sorrel, and as stubborn as a mule. If you wanted him to oblique to the right, he was sure to bear to the left. If you wanted him to halt, he was determined to go on. He had passed a number of hands. Sergeant Bricker rode him on the march through Kentucky. He was handsome, and tough as whalebone. When the writer was promoted to “post-messenger,” this white-faced sorrel was recommended as just the horse for that kind of service. He rode very well as long as he was in company with other horses, but when you attempted to start out alone he wouldn’t start. He would side up against a tree or a fence-rail, and nothing short of a thunderbolt would move him. My friend, the Adjutant, took a fancy to the horse, and proposed to break him of his foolish capers. He rode the horse to Nashville once; and after that he had no more use for him. His sore shins, which he got by rubbing against sign-posts and street-carts, helped him to remember this fruitless experiment.

Knowing, therefore, the disposition of the beast I was riding, it is no wonder that in the midst of this wild and furious onslaught I should be filled with mortal fears that this unmanageable charger would take it into his head to dash through the ranks of the enemy single-breasted. This refractory war-horse recovered from his wound, and passed through a number of hands before he landed in the bone yard.