| Unit Name: | First Kentucky Brigade |
| Dates: | 1861–1865 |
| Size: | Brigade |
| Nickname: | "Orphan Brigade" |
| Equipment: | Enfield rifled muskets |
| Equipment Label: | Arms |
| Battles: | American Civil War
|
| Commander1 Label: | Commanding officers |
The Orphan Brigade was the nickname of the First Kentucky Brigade, a group of military units recruited from Kentucky to fight for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The brigade was the largest Confederate unit to be recruited from Kentucky during the war. Its original commander was John C. Breckinridge, former United States vice president, and Kentucky's former senator, who was enormously popular with Kentuckians.
The regiments that were part of the Orphan Brigade were the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th Kentucky Infantry Regiments. Units of the Orphan Brigade were involved in many military engagements in the American South during the war, including the Battle of Shiloh. In 1862, Breckinridge was promoted to division command and was succeeded in the brigade by Brigadier General Roger W. Hanson. At the Battle of Stones River, the brigade suffered heavy casualties in an assault on January 2, 1863, including General Hanson. Breckinridge - who vehemently disputed the order to charge with the army's commander, General Braxton Bragg - rode among the survivors, crying out repeatedly, "My poor Orphans! My poor Orphans," noted brigade historian Ed Porter Thompson, who used the term in his 1868 history of the unit. The name came from how the Confederacy viewed its soldiers from Kentucky (which remained neutral in the Union, though half the state seceded and formed the Confederate government of Kentucky, was claimed by the Confederacy, and was represented by a star in both countries' flags and had representation in both governments).[1] The term was not in widespread use during the war, but it became popular afterwards among the veterans.
The Orphan Brigade lost another commander at the Battle of Chickamauga, when Brigadier General Benjamin H. Helm, Abraham Lincoln's brother-in-law, was mortally wounded on September 20, 1863, and died the following day. Major Rice E. Graves, the artillery commander, was also mortally wounded.[2]
The Orphan Brigade served throughout the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, then were converted to mounted infantry and opposed Sherman's March to the Sea. They ended the war fighting in South Carolina in late April 1865, and surrendered at Washington, Georgia, on May 6–7, 1865.[3]
Captain Fayette Hewitt, Helm's assistant Adjutant-General, had all the brigade's papers (over twenty volumes of record books, morning reports, letter-copy books as well as thousands of individual orders and reports) boxed up and taken to Washington. After the surrender, Hewitt brought the boxes back to Kentucky with him, and in 1887 he donated them to the U.S. War Department.[4]
When the Orphan Brigade was mustered into service, weapons were in short supply. The troops were armed with old smoothbore muskets (some flintlock and others percussion) along with shotguns and hunting rifles (Hawkens). They were given a bounty if they brought their own rifle. Some men had no arms at all. Only a week before the Battle of Shiloh, every regiment except the 9th Kentucky was issued a supply of Enfield rifles imported from England (the 9th armed themselves with Enfields captured during the battle).
From that point onward, most of the Orphan Brigade carried the long three-band Model 1853 Enfield rifle. When the unit surrendered in March 1865, some men were still carrying the same rifles they had had since Shiloh.
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