Meanest and 'Damnest' Job, The: Being the Civil War Exploits and Civilian Accomplishments of Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker During and After the War

By Michael P. Rucker

Most Civil War histories focus on the performance of top-level generals. However, it was the individual officers below them who actually led the troops to enact the orders. Some of these were remarkably effective. One such officer was Edmund Winchester Rucker. He was a force to be reckoned with, both during the Civil War and in his post-war business ventures. He was courageous, tough and resourceful, and achieved significant results in every assignment. During the campaign by the United States Army to capture the upper Mississippi River, Rucker and his faithful Confederate artillerists, with only three operable cannons, held off the entire Federal fleet which possessed 105 heavy guns. Later, in East Tennessee, Rucker’s duties included punishing saboteurs and conscripting unwilling local citizens into the Confederate Army. He described these assignments as: “The meanest and damnest [sic] duty a soldier had to perform.” Following the battles for Chattanooga, he served with General Nathan Bedford Forrest as a cavalry brigade commander, earning high merits for his performance. Rucker’s leadership was a major factor in the Confederate victory in the Battle of Brices Cross Roads, which has been called “History’s Greatest Cavalry Battle.” Subsequent to the Battle of Nashville, Rucker was wounded and captured; although his left arm was amputated, this did not impede his future achievements. After the war, Colonel Rucker and General Forrest became business partners in a railroad-building project. Rucker did well from this venture and became one of the wealthiest early entrepreneurs in Birmingham. In recognition of his many accomplishments, Fort Rucker Alabama was named in his honor. This first biography on his life examines, at a fast-moving pace, the military and business accomplishments of this outstanding leader who left his mark on both the Civil War and Southern industry of the time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781588383839

Michael P. Rucker

MICHAEL P. RUCKER, a Civil War enthusiast since his high school days, calls Virginia his home despite residing in Peoria, Illinois for much of his adult life. He is a lecturer on the War Between the States and conducted research for The Meanest and 'Damnest' Job for fifteen years. Mike is also the author of 20 children’s books and a book about the exploits of Dr. William Parks Rucker entitled Bridge Burner. Mike was married to a Rucker family fourth cousin, Harriet, who passed away November 2016 after 42 years of beautiful marriage. His son Derek and his daughter-in-law Diane live with their three daughters—Brianna, Fiona, and Sabrina—in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

Book preview

The Civil War community has long needed a book on Edmund Winchester Rucker, and at last it has one. Aside from some very brief biographies, little has been written about this outstanding Confederate officer, excepting his dashing charges at Brices Crossroads. The Meanest and ‘Damnest’ Job covers the man’s life extensively, and in a most readable style, while discussing the events that influenced Edmund Rucker’s calls to duty. Any Civil War enthusiast will enjoy this work. Any Civil War library will be improved by its addition.

— BRIG. GEN. PARKER HILLS, Ret.

The Meanest and ‘Damnest’ Job book brings to life Edmund Winchester Rucker’s participation in the Civil War and his involvement in post-war Alabama railroad construction and Birmingham industry, where he played a significant role in transforming the Sloss Furnace Company into the newly formed chartered Sloss Iron and Steel Company. The book is a lively account, painstakingly researched, that recovers for a new generation of readers the fascinating story of Rucker’s life. It serves as an interesting character study, but also usefully fills in the blanks of our understanding about an important but lesser-known Civil War leader.

— KAREN R. UTZ, Curator and Historian, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark

Edmund Winchester Rucker

ALSO BY MICHAEL P. RUCKER

Bridge Burner: The Full and Factual Story of Dr. William Parks Rucker, Slave-Owning Union Partisan

NewSouth Books

105 S. Court Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

Copyright © 2019 by Michael P. Rucker

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rucker, Michael P., author.

Title: The meanest and damnest job : the Civil War experiences and civilian history of Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker / Michael P. Rucker.

Description: Montgomery, AL : NewSouth Books, [2019] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019018009 (print) | LCCN 2019018900 (ebook) | ISBN 9781588383839 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781588383822

Subjects: LCSH: Rucker, Edmund Winchester, 1835-1924. | Confederate States of America—Armed Forces—Officers—Biography. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865.

Classification: LCC E467.1.R85 (ebook) | LCC E467.1.R85 R83 2019 (print) | DDC 973.7/3013092 [B] —dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018009

Maps: Gorman and Associates, Peoria, Illinois

Design by Randall Williams

Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan

Contents

Maps

Significant Dates in the Life of Edmund Winchester Rucker

Preface

Introduction

1A Self-Trained Engineer

2Tennessee Prepares for War

3Fortifying the Mighty Mississippi

4Occupying Columbus: A Strategic Error

5The Kentucky Pro-U.S. ‘Neutrality’

6Grant Takes the Initiative—Seizes Paducah

7Fort DeRussy—‘Gibraltar of the West’

8The Inconclusive Battle of Belmont—‘Seeing the Elephant’

9The Horrific Lady Polk Calamity—She was No ‘Lady’

10Forts Henry and Donelson—Who’s in Charge?

11The Abandonment of Fort DeRussy—‘Goodbye Columbus’

12Fortifying Island Number 10—A Soggy Sandbar

13The Construction of Rucker’s Redan

14The Bombardment of Rucker’s Redan—Three Cannons Hold Off 105

15The Abandonment of New Madrid and the Surrender of Island Number 10

16‘Bloody Shiloh’ and the Retreat to Corinth

17Rucker Assigned to East Tennessee

18Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith Invade Kentucky

19Martial Law: ‘The Meanest and ‘Damnest’ Job’

20Rucker Not Re-elected as an Officer by His Men

21Rosecrans vs. Bragg—Two Procrastinators

22Rucker Provides the Rear Guard in the Evacuation of Chattanooga

23Chickamauga—Bragg Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

24Chattanooga—‘Grant Sprang like a Caged Lion’

25Rucker (Finally) Assigned to Serve with Forrest

26The Battle of Brices Cross Roads—‘The Greatest of All Cavalry Battles’

27The Battle of Tupelo—Confederate Lack of Coordination

28Rucker Returns to Duty—and Controversy

29‘See the Boat Come ’Round the Bend’—The Horse Marines

30The Cannonade of Johnsonville—A ‘Baby Waker!’

31Onward to Nashville—and Disaster

32The Battle of Nashville—Confederate Misfortune

33Prisoner of War

34Forrest Calls It Quits

35After the War—Railroad Boom and Bust—and Boom Again

36From Railroad Builder to Pig Iron Magnate

Appendices

A.Tennessee Declaration of Independence and Ordinance

B.Military Organization and Rank

C.Forts Named DeRussy

D.Johnson’s Island Military Prison

E.Forrest’s Farewell Address to His Troops

F.That Matter of Rank for Rucker—and a Final Conundrum

Bibliography

Notes

Image Credits and Notes

Index

Maps

The World of Edmund Winchester Rucker

Principal Sites, Rivers and Railroads

Island Number 10 and New Madrid

U.S. Army Map of Columbus and Belmont

Cities for which the city class gunboats were named

Bridges Burned by Unionists

Battle of Brices Cross Roads

Rucker’s attack on the wagon train

Battle of Tupelo

Forrest’s attack on the Johnsonville Depot

Location of certain commanders at Nashville Dec. 15, 1864

Significant Dates in the Life of Edmund Winchester Rucker

Preface

What does that mean? What kind of book title is that?

These were some of the initial reactions of those who proofread the draft of this narrative when they encountered the quotation I used for the title: The meanest and ‘damnest’ job . . .

The full quote is The meanest and damnest [sic] job a soldier ever had, which was attributed to Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker while he was assigned to administer martial law and forced conscription in east Tennessee in parts of 1862–63.

I feel that the phrase accurately summarizes the nature of the entire war, as war is always a mean job and the Civil War epitomized such cruelty and horror.

So, does the world need another Civil War book?

I pondered this question while in the research phase of this project, but since it was to be a biography, I decided that Edmund Winchester Rucker merited attention and needed to be written about. His is the story of an individual who had a variety of Civil War assignments and adventures but also became a prominent and respected businessman after the war.

One reason I initiated this project was that I have often been asked whether I am related to the namesake Rucker for whom Fort Rucker, Alabama, is named. The answer is that his great-grandfather is our closest family connection—so, not very close.

Coverage of the early battles, when Rucker was not significantly involved, is limited to brief summaries; the focus is on his participation when he was most prominent and effective. The background of the early battles, as well as important political events, are necessary elements to understand Rucker’s involvement as the war progressed; his place in the sequence of events was dependent upon the outcome of these early events. Without an overview of these important prerequisite developments, Rucker’s later participation would seem disjointed.

I have tried to be entirely neutral towards both sides in the war, although I may have been somewhat harsh in my criticism of the leadership and decision-making ability of certain leaders on both sides of the conflict. However, I have also commented favorably when commendations were due.

It is said that all history is biography. I hope readers will enjoy this biography of Edmund Winchester Rucker, a compelling historical figure.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The narrative would have been significantly less authoritative had it not been for the following individuals who went out of their way to provide information and assistance:

Parker Hills, Brig. Gen. U.S. Army (Ret.), Battle Focus [Civil War battle site tours], Clinton, Mississippi. For information about the battles of Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo.

Ross Massey, Nashville, Tennessee, for details about the battles in Middle Tennessee, particularly the Battle of Nashville.

John K. Ross, Jr., former curator of the Hickman County Museum, Clinton, Kentucky, for information and images concerning Fort DeRussy, Columbus, Kentucky, and the Battle of Belmont.

Karen R. Utz, Curator, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Birmingham, Alabama, for details about Rucker’s business interests in Birmingham.

Dr. Jean E. Jost, Alumna Professor of English Literature, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, for invaluable assistance with editing and structure.

Kelly VanLaningham, News Editor, (Ret.) Peoria (Illinois) Journal Star, for comprehensive editing of the manuscript.

Edmund Winchester Rucker; detail from Vulcan statue that looms over downtown Birmingham, Alabama; Rucker’s signature.

Introduction

Edmund Winchester Rucker (July 22, 1835–April 13, 1924) was a man whose presence commanded attention. Large in stature, yet athletic in deportment, he moved not ponderously, but with smoothness and purpose. A full head of dark brown hair framed a powerful face.

During the Civil War years, he could have posed as a model for the statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metal working, which would eventually dominate his adopted post-war city of Birmingham, Alabama.¹ Birmingham did not exist in name or geographical presence during the war, but Edmund Winchester Rucker did, and he was to make a significant mark upon both the war effort of the Confederate States of America and upon the postbellum city of Birmingham.

His firm, steady, even fierce blue eyes were set beneath heavy eyebrows surmounted by a strong brow and thick, unruly hair. It was his eyes that those who encountered him remembered most. When aroused during the heat of battle, he was described by more than one observer as having a bulldog look. Indeed, the term seems appropriate for this determined fighter. Whatever commitment he set his mind to he pursued with vigor and determination. Whenever he appeared on the scene, he was a man to be reckoned with.

There are no references found concerning his sense of humor and it is likely that a man as focused as Rucker was not given to easy mirth. There are many references, however, to his talented leadership ability and his firmness as a disciplinarian—and to an occasional use of temper.

His gift for mathematics and his brief career as a civil engineer augmented an analytical mind that yielded effective decisions during the heat of battle and later in the rough-and-tumble world of post-war Alabamian industry.

There are also no verifiable references to his use of tobacco and alcohol. His commander during the final war years, Nathan Bedford Forrest, eschewed both and it seems likely that Rucker, if he partook of either, did so only in moderation. However, it is hard to perceive of a captain of industry, as he became in Birmingham, not smoking an occasional celebratory cigar or partaking modestly of a fine wine, cognac, or even a shot of well-aged bourbon.

He derived not from abject poverty, as Forrest did, but from the fledgling middle class of the antebellum South. His father was a doctor and relatively prominent in the community. His mother was from the Winchester dynasty of Tennessee, but there is no indication that any significant portion of the Winchester wealth came to her. The family did not have sufficient means to send young Edmund off to college, or even to assure him a basic grammar school education. He had to make it on his own. And he did very well.

1

A Self-Trained Engineer

Shoot the man on the white horse, the U.S. officer barked.¹

A volley of bullets whistled past the Confederate colonel’s head. A shot shattered his left arm. He spurred his horse to flee, but the excited animal bucked and pitched him head-over-heels into a barricade of fence rails. Thus ended the military career of Confederate Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker. It occurred the evening of December 16, 1864, following the Battle of Nashville.

He was born July 22, 1835, on the Rucker family farm in Rutherford County, Tennessee, about thirty-five miles southeast of Nashville near the town of Murfreesboro.² He was the fourth of eight children born to Dr. Edmund Rucker and Louise Orville Winchester Rucker.

The family relocated twice while Edmund was young, first to Wilson County. By 1850 the family was in the DeKalb County settlement of Cold Water. DeKalb County, then and now, was a scenic area with green rolling hills. The beautiful land was not, however, conducive to large-scale agriculture.

According to Edythe Johns Rucker Whitley in her History of the Rucker Family, Dr. Edmund Rucker sent his wife and other family members from their DeKalb home to his wife’s estate, Cragfont, during the early months of the Civil War for their safety.³ He remained at home. U.S. partisans tied Dr. Rucker to a post and forced him to watch his home be burned. Dr. Rucker then walked many miles to the home of his daughter, Josephine Rucker Boddie. He died there at her home from exhaustion (and perhaps grief) November 9, 1861.⁴ There can be no doubt that this incident embittered his son towards those who supported the United States against the Confederacy.

As a rather impoverished area, DeKalb County had no public school during the childhood of Edmund Winchester Rucker. He wrote in a brief autobiographical statement that he was fourteen before he received his first formal education at the Wilson County Common School.⁵,⁶ Since the family lived in DeKalb County at the time, he may have roomed with relatives in the adjacent county to obtain some schooling. Later in life he declared [I] never studied English grammar one day in my life.⁷ Yet, despite his lack of schooling, his written communications were good and he was apparently well-spoken.

In 1853, just short of his eighteenth birthday, Rucker left home and ventured to Nashville to look for work. George Cruikshank wrote in A History of Birmingham and its Environs:

For weeks he tramped the streets, having little or no money. When night came on he went out to a vacant lot in the suburbs to sleep. Finally, information came to him of a party surveying for the route of the railroad chartered to run from Nashville to Decatur, Alabama—the Tennessee & Alabama Railroad. After walking nine miles he caught up with a [survey] party and secured a job of cutting brushes on the right of way. Then came other duties: making stakes, acting as a survey chainman, then rod man, running the level, etc. This was congenial work, and his ambition led him to spend every spare moment studying mathematics and other branches pertaining to engineering and surveying.⁸

Having acquired the skills of a surveyor, Rucker next worked for the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad, running the level.⁹ Construction of this road was halted at Kingston Springs, only twenty-three miles from Nashville. During the war, the U.S. Army completed another sixty-three miles to the Tennessee River and would construct a terminal there at a settlement called Knott’s Landing. This place was renamed Johnsonville, in honor of the Federal military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. Late in 1864, Rucker, as a brigade commander under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, would command artillery that would reduce the U.S. Army’s Johnsonville warehouses and wharves to ashes.

When construction of the Nashville & Northwestern faltered in 1856, Rucker migrated to the rapidly growing boomtown of Memphis.¹⁰ In Memphis, he secured a job as a surveyor with the city. He was good at mathematics and during this period studied engineering.¹¹,¹² In 1859, at twenty-three years of age, he joined with another engineer to form a civil engineering company called Rucker and Parson. Their office was located at 139 Main Street.¹³,¹⁴

2

Tennessee Prepares for War

Before Rucker or Forrest could join an army, Tennessee had to have one, and while the other Southern states seceded and began to raise armies, Tennessee procrastinated. The road to Tennessee’s secession is a complicated bit of history. Governor Isham Green Harris was an ardent secessionist, and on January 7, 1861, called the state legislature together in special session for that avowed purpose. The legislators could not reach a decision and decided to put the question of whether to hold a state convention to consider secession to the voting public. Meanwhile, seven other states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—promptly declared secession and met in Montgomery, Alabama, where on February 4 they organized the Confederate States of America.

On February 8, the Confederate representatives adopted a provisional constitution and the following day elected Jefferson Davis president. Davis, a Mexican-American War veteran, had been appointed major general of the Mississippi militia in January. In his inaugural address of February 18, 1861, Davis summarized the feelings of many in the South with the statement:

. . . Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.¹

Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1807/1808–December 6, 1889) was born in Christian (now Todd) County, Kentucky. He was a student at Transylvania University in Lexington. He then attended the U.S. Military Academy, where he graduated twenty-third in a class of thirty-three in 1828.²

Davis owned a large cotton plantation in Mississippi with more than one hundred slaves. He served in the Mexican-American War as the colonel of a volunteer regiment called The Mississippi Rifles. He was the secretary of war under Democratic President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857 and served as a Democrat in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. When Mississippi seceded, he resigned from the Senate and was appointed major general of the Mississippi state troops. The Congress of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America appointed him as provisional president and on November 6, 1861, named him permanent president.³

Virginia was admitted to the Confederacy on May 7, 1861. On May 20, the Confederacy relocated its capital from Montgomery to Richmond, primarily to be closer to the anticipated U.S. invasion of Virginia.

Governor Harris was terribly disappointed that his state was not represented at the formation of the Confederate States of America. However, the citizens of Tennessee were very much split on the question of secession. On February 9, 1861, they voted by a margin of 68,282 to 59,449 not to call a convention for the purpose of considering secession.⁴ That same day, February 9, Jefferson Davis was elected provisional president of the C.S.A. Four days later, by an official count of the electoral votes, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.

Tennessee Governor Isham Green Harris.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The situation concerning Tennessee’s status remained murky for several months as war clouds gathered.

The Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861; it surrendered two days later. The war was on. President Lincoln declared that insurrection exists and called upon the twenty-four remaining states to provide seventy-five thousand militia volunteers to uphold the laws of the United States. To this end, on April 15, U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron requested that Governor Harris provide two regiments of militia for Federal service.

Governor Harris responded in a telegram to President Lincoln:

Tennessee will furnish not a single man for the purpose of coercion, but fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brothers.⁵

Governor Harris was fervently in favor of maintaining slavery: Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity and domestic happiness.⁶

Isham G. Harris (February 10, 1818–July 8, 1897) was born near Tullahoma, Franklin County, on his parents’ farm. The family owned a small number of slaves. In 1841, he obtained admission to the Tennessee bar and quickly acquired a reputation for honesty and legal proficiency. Harris’s political career began with his election to the Tennessee State Senate in 1847. The next year he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Re-elected in 1850, he declined to run for a third term to practice law in Memphis. In 1857, Harris was elected governor of Tennessee. He won reelection in 1859 and 1861.

After the U.S. capture of Nashville in 1862, President Lincoln named Andrew Johnson as Military Governor of Tennessee. Harris was, thereby, essentially out of a job. He volunteered as a civilian aide-de-camp on the staffs of generals Albert S. Johnston, Braxton Bragg, John B. Hood, Joseph E. Johnston, and P. G. T. Beauregard. Harris was present at nearly all the important battles in Tennessee.⁷

Harris had made up his mind that Tennessee should join the Confederacy, no matter what the citizens or the legislature of Tennessee thought about the matter. Impatient to even wait for the legislature to make it official, Governor Harris issued an order on April 26, 1861, to raise a Volunteer Force of West Tennessee.⁸

On May 7, 1861, the state legislature affirmed Harris’s order with the Army Bill, calling for fifty-five thousand volunteers, of whom twenty-five thousand were to be armed and thirty thousand to be held in reserve. The bill called for the raising of twenty-one regiments of infantry, a regiment of cavalry, and ten artillery companies.⁹

Initially called the Provisional Army of Tennessee, this state militia formed what would become the formidable Army of Tennessee.¹⁰ Unfortunately for the valiant soldiers involved, this army would be plagued from start to finish by less-than-capable general-level officers, meaning that they ultimately lost more battles than they won.¹¹

The initial objective of Harris’s Provisional Army was to resist any attempt to force the state to remain in the United States. Most citizens of Tennessee considered themselves Tennesseans first, and only secondarily as citizens of the United States. The primary concern of most Tennesseans was to keep what many called the War of Northern Aggression from spilling over into their state.

The referendum to consider secession had been defeated the previous February, but the attitude among Tennessee voters changed after the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and President Lincoln’s declaration of war. The Tennessee General Assembly sent to the voters another referendum calling for a vote on two questions:

1)whether to secede from the United States.

2)whether to join the Confederacy.

It was called An act to submit to the vote of the people a Declaration of Independence, and for other purposes. Saturday, June 8, 1861, was set as the election day when voters were to write Separation or No Separation on their ballots in answer to the secession question and Representation or No Representation on the question of joining the Confederacy. The referendum to secede passed by a vote of 104,471 to 47,183, and the legislature on June 8, 1861, passed an act of Declaration of Independence and Ordinance dissolving the federal relations between the State of Tennessee and the United States of America. [See Appendix A]¹²

Following the passage of the Army Bill, Governor Harris named Gideon Pillow major general of the Tennessee militia.

General Gideon Pillow.

A period newspaper cartoon, The Self-Inflating Pillow, parodying General Pillow for inflating his own Mexican War accomplishments while disparaging the victories of General Winfield Scott.

Gideon Pillow (June 8, 1806–October 8, 1878) was a prominent lawyer from a well-connected Tennessee family. As a Jacksonian Democrat, Pillow was instrumental in securing the 1844 presidential nomination for his close friend and fellow lawyer James Polk. When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, President Polk repaid his civilian friend with a commission as brigadier general. In April 1848, President Polk had Pillow promoted to major general, making him second-in-command to the capable and respected General Winfield Scott, with whom Pillow had a serious clash of personalities. Pillow attempted to claim full credit for victories in several Mexican-American War battles and did all he could to tarnish the reputation of General Scott. Scott had him arrested and tried by court martial. Pillow was not convicted, but was discharged from the army in July 1848. Pillow’s Mexican-American War performance was poor, if not inept. His major strengths were boundless energy and enthusiasm, while his shortcomings included shameless self-aggrandizement, arrogance, insubordination, and poor tactical decision-making. These shortcomings would cause problems for the Confederacy.

He was quite wealthy, with large land holdings in Tennessee and Arkansas. In fact, he was the third largest slave owner in Tennessee and sixth in slave holdings in Arkansas. Perhaps ironically, Pillow called the new army his Army of Liberation.

Pillow and Harris were besieged by a powerful bloc of Mississippi Valley plantation owners and Memphis industrialists who desired to protect their interests along the Mississippi River. They feared being overrun by marauding U.S. troops and gunboats.

Most of these influential men were personal acquaintances of both Harris and Pillow, and the two leaders felt compelled to respond to the demands of their friends and constituents. This caused Harris and Pillow to focus heavily upon fortifications along the Mississippi, establishing forts to prevent Federal gunboats and troop carriers from descending the river. This limited strategic focus was to eventually prove detrimental, even fatal to the security of the state and the future of the Confederate States of America.

Tennessee had established its reputation as the Volunteer State during the Mexican-American War and its citizens reaffirmed this trait when called forward in 1861. The primary recruitment depot in Memphis and the secondary depots across the state were overwhelmed with volunteers. So many came forward that most had to be sent home for want of weapons, provisions, uniforms, and officers. When the call went out for volunteers, there were only about 1,200 Mexican-American War flintlock muskets stored in the basement of the state capitol. There were no cannons, except for a few ancient guns in the hands of various militia, and no uniforms or tents.¹³ The Confederacy would provide no assistance until the state seceded and even then paltry help came from Richmond. The priority was to supply Virginia and the eastern states, which were facing the immediate threat of invasion by the Federal forces. Nonetheless, the army that sprang to life in Tennessee