Gracie's Alabama Volunteers

By John Michael Burton

Using authentic letters, the author chronicles the experiences of the men who fought in the 59th Alabama Volunteer Regiment throughout the Civil War.

The 59th Alabama Volunteer Regiment originated in the spring of 1862 as Hilliard’s Alabama Legion. Its volunteers ranged from sixteen to sixty years old; many were illiterate; very few owned slaves. After the harrowing battle at Chickamauga, the legion was reformed under the dynamic, New York-born Brig. Gen. Archibald Gracie

Gracie led them during the battle of Beans Station and throughout the harsh sojourn in Tennessee. Though he survived the battle of Richmond, Gracie was killed while his regiment was entrenched at Petersburg. His surviving men finished the war with the Army of Northern Virginia.

The author’s great-great-grandfather, William Tate Burton, volunteered at the age of twenty-nine and was with Gracie’s regiment for the entire war. When injuries kept him from active combat, he served the regiment in the demanding and dangerous role of teamster, or mule skinner, driving the heavy wagons filled with crucial artillery and other supplies.

Gracie’s Alabama Volunteers includes vintage photographs, excerpts from soldiers’ letters, and complete muster rolls for the regiment.

Praise for Gracie’s Alabama Volunteers

“It is a well written, well researched, and a very informative regimental history.” —Lake Charles American Press

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 31, 2003
• ISBN: 9781455605248

Book preview

GRACE'S Alabama Volunteers

John Michael Burton

The Fifty-ninth Alabama Volunteer Regiment originated in the spring of 1862 as Hilliard's Alabama Legion. Its volunteers ranged from sixteen to sixty years old; many were illiterate; very few owned slaves. After the harrowing battle at Chickamauga, the legion was reformed under the dynamic, New York-born Brig. Gen. Archibald Gracie.

Gracie led them during the Battle of Bean's Station and throughout the harsh sojourn in Tennessee. Though he survived the battle of Richmond, Gracie was killed while his regiment was entrenched at Petersburg. His surviving men finished the war with the Army of Northern Virginia.

The author's great-great-grandfather, William Tate Burton, volunteered at the age of twenty-nine and was with Grade's regiment for the entire war. When injuries kept him from active combat, he served the regiment in the demanding and dangerous role of teamster, or mule skinner, driving the heavy wagons filled with crucial artillery and other supplies.

Grade's Alabama Volunteers includes vintage photographs, excerpts from soldiers' letters, and complete muster rolls for the regiment.

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To the memory of the gallant men who fought with this regiment and to my parents, the late Homer C. and Gladys Copous Burton

Preface

Many regiments of fighting men were mustered during the War of Northern Aggression. This is the story of one of those regiments: the Fifty-ninth Alabama Volunteers. I had been told many years ago that my great-great-grandfather, William Tate Burton, had fought in this war, but I did not know very much about him until I was an adult. One of my great-aunts had in her possession letters, Bible notes, and old pictures of and about my family and a great deal of information about William Tate Burton. He was from Coosa County, Alabama, and would be one of the volunteers who fought with the Fifty-ninth.

The Fifty-ninth Regiment fought in many hard battles during its career. As far as I know, this is the first complete work written about them as a fighting unit. I have included a history of Hilliard's legion, for that legion is where they began their long career. These men suffered hardships that only men of faith could have survived. Alabama gave her best for the support of the South and the Fifty-ninth was part of that effort.

Many history books have warped the image of this great state, and Hollywood has given a backwoods, rednecked, racist representation of it to the world. Only in recent years have we been given the whole truth about this great and terrible period of Southern history. It has really been hard on the people of the South. Many organizations are trying to do away with our heritage. We must not change our history, for it is America's history.

Most people never take the time to go to a good library and learn what really happened in that war. There are still many untold stories about the War Between the States. This book contains some of them and will take readers from the farms of Coosa County to Appomattox, Virginia, where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865.

I have read over 200 wartime letters about the men of this regiment. The Confederate records show that they were second to none when it came to a good fight. They were under the command of Brig. Gen. Archibald Gracie and Maj. Gen. Bushrod Rust Johnson, who were both Yankees by birth. They fought in many of the bloodiest battles of the war.

The soldiers of the Fifty-ninth Alabama Volunteer Regiment marched so much that they wore out uniforms and brogans on a regular basis. Their story has been long overdue.

Introduction

I would like to thank all of the wonderful people who helped me with this project. This book has been not only a real challenge but also a wonderful experience for me. I have learned so much about this war. The men of the Fifty-ninth had great respect for many of the Yankee generals and knew that the Union soldiers didn't like killing any more than they did. This was more than just a war against slavery or states' rights. This was a war about trying to keep the United States from dividing, and more important, it was about human beliefs and protecting American people from a government-controlled way of life.

Even though the South lost the war, and its pride, it still gave America its best. At the end of the war, the men of this regiment were still soldiers even though they were tired, heartbroken, hungry, and homesick, but they knew most of all they were still Alabamians. Alabama suffered greatly after the war. Many of her factories and mills were damaged or destroyed by Yankee raiders. Families were starving for lack of food and other needed necessities. Farms that many of the soldiers worked before the war were grown up in weeds and thorns. Mules and horses were few and far between. The South had no army left and no protection from the scum of the earth. The roaming carpetbaggers and bands of deserters from both armies were going about doing the devil's work. The scalawags were trying their hand at changing our former government to suit their ways. For eight long years, Alabama was under the Yankee gun after the war was supposed to be over. Many counties were so poor that people were digging up roots from different plants and boiling them for nourishment. Some loaded their things in wagons and made trips to counties in better shape to beg for relief. Wives were left to themselves because their loved ones had died or just never made it back to Alabama, and many of their children died because of hunger.

Reconstruction of the South was a joke for the most part. The people of Alabama were up against the wall. The real reason the KKK was formed was to protect Southerners from the law-breaking lowlifes who were roaming the Southland. It was not formed originally to give the black man hell. That came later when it was taken over by a different caliber of men. The men of the Fifty-ninth came home to Alabama only to do without some more. Their money was no good, and being Confederate soldiers, they were dealt with as traitors by the Union postwar politicians and were treated as second class. If one so much as raised a Confederate flag, he was arrested and charged for trying to bring the rebel way of life back to the Southland. The only winner in war is war itself.

Alabama gave many a good man for the Southern cause and in all the wars since then. Let us never be ashamed to be born and raised in Alabama and never be ashamed to be in debt to our ancestors. I love the U.S.A. but Alabama and the South is where my devotion is. These men of the Confederate infantry did too. Many are buried in the old fields of Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, forever in the arms of Jesus. May we never forget them. Were they not Americans?

GRACIE'S Alabama Volunteers

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CHAPTER I

The Volunteers

The spring of April 1862 was in full glory in Coosa County, Alabama. The children took their spring tonic, as was the custom of the time. Many crops were coming up and the grass was getting green. The jonquils were blooming and everything was very much as it ought to be, except that a terrible war was in its second year and many young men were already up North fighting the Union army. There was talk of a Yankee invasion coming to Alabama.

All across the state notices were being posted on courthouses, church fronts, and store walls, calling for volunteers to stop the Yankee assault on the South. Men and boys signed up with the different outfits recruiting in their counties. Coosa County would have many volunteers and Hilliard's legion would get three companies. Goodwater, Marble Valley, and Rockford were crucial posts for joining. The counties of Autauga, Barbour, Butler, Randolph, Dale, Pike, and Tallapoosa received volunteers for the legion as well. Montgomery would be the Confederate military hub for the state.

Most of the volunteers were farmers and planters and had never been that far from their farms. Some were men of professional trades—blacksmiths, wagon makers, teamsters, tanners, gunsmiths, and others. Of these men, most owned no slaves and did not join the Confederate army to protect their right to buy people. Some of them were working on slave plantations when they enlisted. The counties these men came from contained very few slaves—with the exception of the counties of Autauga, Coosa, Dale, and Butler, and a few in Barbour, Tallapoosa, and Randolph. These men desired to protect their land and the Southern way of life. They did not want Northern politicians dictating how they would live.

Image for page 19[graphic][subsumed] Confederate veterans from Barbour County, Alabama (Courtesy Barbour County Historical Society)

Many had sixth- to eight-grade educations and could not read or write. They only knew what they had been told about the war. Some had received letters from their loved ones who were already fighting that told of how it could all be over in a few months. The troops consisted mainly of Scotch-Irish, while some were Negro and Native Americans. The majority followed Christianity—hardshell Baptists, Methodists, and a few Presbyterians and Episcopals. Some were of the Jewish faith. They enlisted with the promise of a fifty-dollar reward for three years' service. Most came from generations of fighting men who had made this great country and/or veterans of the recent war with Mexico. They left family and farms en route to Montgomery, riding mules, horses, or wagons. Many walked. On some occasions, they left out in bands of up to twenty or thirty men, as was the case in Goodwater in May 1862. A group of about twenty-three men joined Hilliard's legion and left out early one morning.

Some of the recruits carried their old flintlocks, shotguns, and Mississippi rifles. Most every man had a side knife for protection on the road. Capt. Westley D. Walden told his recruits not to bring anything: Col. Henry W. Hilliard would take care of them. The captain ordered that a wagon be sent to Rockford, loaded with the recruits' baggage, and taken back to Montgomery for disposal.

Excitement was high. The soldiers ranged in age from sixteen to sixty years old. One requirement well known among the men was