October, 1861. |
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Tennessee; in aiding Zollicoffer in his invasion of Southeastern Kentucky, already alluded to;1 and in supporting Buckner in his treasonable operations in his native State.
Zollicoffer had advanced to Barboursville, the capital of Knox County, so early as the 19th of September, where he dispersed an armed band of Kentucky Unionists, and captured their camp.
He proclaimed peace and security in person and property for all Kentuckians, excepting those who should be found in arms for the Union; but his soldiers could not be restrained, and the inhabitants oiomf that region were mercilessly plundered by them.
Zollicoffer's invasion aroused the Unionists of Eastern Kentucky, and they flew to arms.
A large number of them were mustering and organizing under Colonel Garrard, a plain, earnest, and loyal Kentuckian, at a point among the Rock Castle Hills known as Camp Wild Cat.
It was in a most picturesque region of one of the spurs of the Cumberland Mountains, on the direct road from Cumberland Gap toward the rich “blue-grass region” of Kentucky.
Upon this camp Zollicoffer advanced on the 18th of October, with seven regiments and a light battery.
When intelligence of his approach was received, Colonel Garrard had only about six hundred effective men to oppose him. Others in sufficient numbers to insure a successful resistance were too remote to be available, for the invader moved swiftly, swooping down from the mountains like an eagle on its prey.
Yet when he came, on the morning of the 21st,
he found at Camp Wild Cat, besides Garrard's three regiments, a part of Colonel Coburn's Thirty-third Indiana, and Colonel Connell's Seventeenth Ohio regiments, and two hundred and fifty Kentucky cavalry, under Colonel Woolford, ready to resist him. With the latter came General Schoepf, an officer of foreign birth and military education, who assumed the chief command.
The position of the Unionists was strong.
Zollicoffer with his Tennesseans and a body of Mississippi “Tigers” boldly attacked them, and was twice repulsed.
The first attack was in the morning, the second in the afternoon.
The latter was final.
The contests had been very sharp, and the latter was decisive.
The camp-fires of Zollicoffer's invaders were seen that evening in a sweet little valley two or three miles away from the battle-ground.
Promptly and efficiently had Garrard's call for help been responded to, for toward the close of the second attack a portion of Colonel Steadman's Fourteenth Ohio also came upon the field to aid the Kentuckians, Indianians, and Ohioians already there; and when the invaders had withdrawn, others were seen dragging cannon wearily up the hill for the defense of Camp Wild Cat.
A little later a trial of strategy and skill occurred in the most eastern
1 Zollicoffer, like Polk, made necessity the pretext for scorning the neutrality of Kentucky. On the 14th of September he telegraphed to Governor Magoffin, informing him of his occupation of three mountain ranges in Kentucky, because it was evident that the Unionists in Eastern Kentucky were about to invade East Tennessee, to destroy the great railway and its bridges. He said, apologetically, that he had delayed that “pre-cautionary movement,” until it was evident that “the despotic Government at Washington” had determined to subjugate first Kentucky and then Tennessee, whom he regarded as twin sisters. With the old plea of the unrighteous, that “the end justifies the means,” he declared that he felt a “religious respect for Kentucky's neutrality,” and would continue to feel it, so long as the safety of the Confederate cause would permit. He issued an order at the same time, setting forth that he entered Kentucky to defend “the soil of a sister State against an invading foe.”
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