The 13th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry

Brave men in hard times.

 

East Tennessee, bordering on Virginia and North Carolina, lies within the Appalachian range. While the farmers who lived there had heard mutterings of civil war by 1860, few expected actual hostilities. In the words of Captain Daniel Ellis "Little did I then imagine that the period was rapidly approaching when I, my neighbors, and my relatives, would be hunted and shot at like the wild beasts of the mountains."

News of the firing on Fort Sumter quickly dispelled this illusion. The storm had burst upon them! They met it bravely, and in open defiance of their State government. Tennessee seceded, but the men of East Tennessee adhered with great tenacity to the Union cause. Their reverence was to the "Old Flag".

When they had the courage to burn the bridges of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad in November of 1861, Confederate authorities responded with a brutal campaign of indiscriminate arrests and hangings. Homes were invaded, searched and ransacked, and hundreds of men were compelled to hide while their houses were plundered and their families abused. The life of any man known to have Union sympathies was in mortal danger. At least 200 men and boys in Carter and Johnson counties alone were brutally murdered in a reckless attempt at coercion.

It is probable that these two little counties, Union in their sympathies (but lying so near Virginia, with its strong Confederate sentiment), were the scene of more tragedies in proportion to their population than any other area of the country.

After the dreary winter of 1862, the Confederate Congress passed the "Conscript Act". This took into the Confederate Army all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 years (later extended to 45). It had the effect of sending more men from East Tennessee into the Federal Army than the Confederacy, as they fled their homes to swell the ranks of Union forces in Kentucky.

In the fall of 1863, some 500 or 600 men (a full 200 of whom were under the age of 18 years) from Johnson and Carter counties met at Strawberry Plains. Originally planning to join the Union 12th Tennessee Cavalry, they instead formed the "Thirteenth Tennessee" volunteer cavalry regiment. The Thirteenth was comprised of men who had settled on one idea - the Union ! - and dedicated themselves to its defense and preservation. To this end they gave their labor, their worldly goods, and some their lives.

Theirs was the unit which (along with the Ninth Tennessee and part of the Tenth Michigan Calvary, and while supported by two sections of the First Tennessee Light Artillery) cornered and killed General Morgan - the "Grey Ghost" - at Greeneville in September of 1864.  A squadron from the Thirteenth surrounded the General, and a private shot him when he tried to escape.  It was a brave deed for these men, who were inexperienced soldiers at that time, to dash into a town in the face of Morgan's superior command and attack him.

The Thirteenth fought at Lick Creek, in Morristown, and at Bull's Gap, as well as in many other unnamed and now dimly recalled or forgotten (but nevertheless deadly) skirmishes. In December of '64 when General Stoneman stormed Fort Breckenridge and captured the salt works at Saltville, Virginia, he stated that "the Thirteenth Tennessee Calvary is due the credit of having acted the most conspicuous part".  The men of the regiment estimated that they rode over 3,300 miles during their period of service.

It is good to reflect upon the sacrifice of those who have gone before us, and to rescue from oblivion the efforts of these brave men who endured so much. Their deeds inspire us, and help us to place our own problems into a better perspective.

Ramblings