Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 9.1, Kentucky
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[210] marching by night, deploying in front of the enemy or attacking his lines and posts far in the rear, a life that only men of the toughest and finest fiber can endure; yet this force owed its peculiar excellence as much to the qualities of the men and the subordinate officers as to the distinguished leader.

Such a list of superior subordinate commanders as Basil Duke, Hynes, D. Howard Smith, Grigsby, Cluke, Alston, Steele, Gano, Castleman, Chenault, Brent, and others, was perhaps found in no other brigade of Kentucky cavalry. Yet at the head of their regiments and brigades such leaders as Woodford, Green Clay Smith, Hobson and others, showed qualities of a high order, and their commands proved to be the most effective cavalry of the war. The fighting of the Federal regiments of Kentucky infantry and cavalry throughout the great campaigns and battles of the war showed the men to be possessed of the highest soldierly qualities; but so merged were they in the great Union armies, and so little of distinctive Kentucky history has been collated or published of these, that we find it difficult to illustrate with the recount of their exceptional services.

Again at page 476, he says: ‘The most marked example of the character and success of the Kentucky troops in the Confederate infantry service has been given us in the well preserved history and statistics of the First Kentucky Confederate brigade. We have already noted the daring and gallantry of these troops in the battles of Donelson, of Shiloh, of Baton Rouge, of Chickamauga, and other conflicts, to Dalton, Ga., in May, 1864. On the authority of Gen. Fayette Hewitt, this brigade marched out of Dalton eleven hundred and forty strong on the 7th of May. The hospital reports show that up to September 1st, not quite four months, eighteen hundred and sixty wounds were taken by this command. This includes the killed, but many were struck several times in one engagement, in which case the wounds were counted as one. In ’