The Battle of Tazwell
From: John McDaniel Knoxville
To: JPayne5744@aol.com
Date: Sun, Jan 31, 2010 5:13 pm

Joe,

I enjoyed my visit to your Claiborne County website, and noted your reference to the coverage of the battle by the 14th Ky Assn., which is unusually good, compared to many similar military unit pages. However, it does cover your fight strictly from a Union perspective.

My great grandfather, John Wesley Ball, Jr., of Beech Creek in Hawkins County, was color sergeant of the 39th TN Mtd Inf, and fought in that action. I am having trouble finding credible accounts from a Confederate perspective.

I just spent the day writing this up and, here is what I have. If you see any errors, let me know. For instance, I can't find Lycomon on any of my maps:

Having been assured by Raider John Hunt Morgan that "The whole country can be secured, and 25,000 or 30,000 men will join you at once," Bragg decided to leave half his men, under Van Dorn and Price, to defend Vicksburg and Central Mississippi, and to take the rest, some 34,000 men, to Chattanooga, from where he intended to launch an invasion of Kentucky. Bragg believed that Buell would be forced to follow him. If Grant, who had replaced Halleck when the latter was recalled to Washington, also followed him north, then Van Dorn and Price could recover West Tennessee. Bragg could also expect support from Kirby Smith, who was at Knoxville with 18,000 men, including the 39th Tennessee of Colonel T H Taylor's Brigade, and our great grandfather, John Wesley Ball, Jr. who had, by this time, been elected regimental color sergeant.

The key problem for Bragg was getting his men to Chattanooga before Buell could cross the Tennessee River and take the city. Marching by bad roads in summer heat was not likely to get him there in time, so he sent his men, a division at a time, by rail down to Mobile, then to Atlanta, and finally, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, a round-about route of 776 miles. He began the movement on July 23, and they had all reached Chattanooga two weeks later. It was the largest Confederate railroad movement of the war. The details of the plan to invade Kentucky were hashed out in a Chattanooga hotel room on July 31. There was great enthusiasm for Kirby Smith's idea of a coordinated two column thrust north to the Ohio River. By mid-August, what was now "The Army of Tennessee," and which now included Kirby Smith's levees, was ready to launch their campaign. Their objective, at best, was to re-acquire Kentucky for the Confederacy and, at worst, to secure Kentucky recruits for the army, while Lincoln's generals had to defend all the territory between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers, all at once. Both were ambitious objectives.

Meanwhile, after spending almost six months fruitlessly attempting to stop pro-Union Tennesseans from filtering north through obscure mountain passes to join the Union Army, and after fretting for two months over the prospect of Union invasion through Cumberland Gap, which had been captured by an 8,000 man Union force under Brigadier General George W. Morgan on June 18, Kirby Smith advanced toward Cumberland Gap from Knoxville, intending to clear the way through the gap with the 18,000 troops already available to him. While Braxton Bragg was moving his army to Chattanooga, Smith's Army of East Tennessee marched north in early August. With Stevenson's Division in the lead, Smith camped at the Clinch River, where his pickets, perhaps after hearing of atrocities from refugees fleeing south, sighted one of Morgan's foraging parties 7 miles southeast of Tazwell, county seat of Claiborne County, on the afternoon of August 4.

A foraging expedition, made up of the 22nd Kentucky, 16th Ohio and 42nd Ohio, of Brevet Brigadier General John deCourcy's 26th Brigade, accompanied by the 1st Wisconsin Artillery Battery, had left Cumberland Gap early on the morning of Saturday, August 2, 1862 with two hundred wagons bound for Tazwell. They camped that night on a hill overlooking Tazwell from the north, placing four cannon to command the town, so as to forestall any resistance, while the 16th Ohio, with the other two pieces from the battery, were deployed as pickets on Walten's Ridge, just south of the town. Sunday was spent confiscating horses and provisions from the residents in Tazwell, who they chose to characterize as "Rebels," although most of the citizenry were simply trying to survive this war. On Monday morning, August 4, deCourcy, with seventy wagons, marched seven miles further southeast where, at the crossing of the Clinch River on the road to Morristown, they ran into Kirby Smith's pickets. Reversing course after filling their wagons, and after a skirmish at Lycomon, deCourcy returned to Tazwell, reported the encounter and requested reinforcements. General Morgan immediately dispatched the 14th Kentucky to reinforce deCourcy, that regiment then doing picket duty on Walten's Ridge from their arrival on Tuesday through Tuesday night.

When the 14th was relieved from picket duty by about 400 men of the 16th Ohio at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, August 6, marching down the road a quarter mile to bivouac in an old orchard, Walten's Ridge was covered by dense fog. Within a half hour, Taylor's Brigade of Stevenson's Division, including the 3rd, 39th and 59th Tennessee, supported by the Rhett Artillery, attacked the 16th's pickets out of the fog, driving them down the ridge and capturing 52. When Taylor turned their right flank, the16th Ohio did manage to extricate their two guns from the crest of the ridge but, by the time the 14th Kentucky could be formed to come to their aid, the fight was over and what was left of the 16th Ohio had dispersed. It was very nearly every man for himself. With Taylor's Brigade now in musket range of the 14th Kentucky, and moving to attack both flanks, the Union regiment fired a volley before retiring to the Union line north of town. Then, as Taylor's Brigade advanced toward Tazwell, they passed a lane that ran at right angles to their line of march. Where the lane entered the main road, the Federals had one of their cannon posted, screened from sight by bushes. Sergeant Hackett, who had charge of the piece, double-shotted it with canister and trained it so as to rake the main road and beyond. As Taylor's Brigade came down the slope of Walten's Ridge in line of battle, with colors flying, Hackett waited until his line of sight was filled with gray clad troops before firing his masked gun, sweeping the lane, the road, and the field beyond with a hail of canister. The Confederate casualties from this single discharge are not known, but the slaughter was said to be terrible. In the chaos which ensued, Hackett limbered up his gun and, at a gallop, escaped to the Union position. Both the 16th Ohio and 14th Kentucky lost their knapsacks, as well as two day's rations for 800 men and about 50 small arms that day, but deCourcy managed to save all their wagons and artillery, along with all the horses and provisions they had confiscated. For the rest of the day there was a desultory exchange of artillery fire between the opposing forces on the two hills until, after dark, with the Yankee wagons well on their way to the gap, deCourcy retired.

It had been John Ball's first field and, if he had not, as color sergeant, been marching in advance of the Confederate line, it could have been his last. But what had been an instant of horror for some, became weeks of misery for the rest. deCourcy's rape of Claiborne County had stripped the area of provisions for civilians and Confederate military alike. One of Taylor's men, writing home to his parents in Georgia on August 12, complained of the lack of rations over the prior month, saying that sometimes the troops went without food for three days at a time.

Not wishing to blunt his sword on this unusually strong position, General Smith waited for his reinforcements from Bragg and, as soon as Cleburne's and and Churchill's divisions arrived, bypassed Cumberland Gap through Barbourville to the west, on August 16, leaving Stevenson's Division to watch Morgan's force in the gap, who Smith believed were too well fortified to capture, but too small a force to challenge him in the field. But with Smith now in Morgan's rear, Morgan abandoned Cumberland Gap on September 17, and Stevenson's Division marched through the gap without a shot fired.

Iain Guth MacIan, Domhnullach (John, A Voice, Son of James, one of the Donalds)
Seannache (Clan Historian)
The MacDonnell Of Leinster Association
http://macdonnellofleinster.org