Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/273

Rh On August 14, 1862, General E. Kirby Smith left Knoxville, Tenn., with an army of some 11,000 men, about 1,000 of whom were cavalry. This army, by forced marches, passed rapidly across the intervening mountainous country, subsisting to a great extent upon the roasting ears growing in the fields along their route; and on August 30 its "advance brigades, about 5,000 strong, hungry and pugnacious, struck the Federal Army, under General William Nelson, some 16,000 strong, at Richmond, Ky., and destroyed it. It has been said that in no battle in the Civil War was an army so completely destroyed as Nelson's was in this fight. At the same time General Braxton Bragg entered Kentucky from another direction with a strong force and advanced upon Louisville; and thus, for the first and only time during the war, nearly the whole of Kentucky was within the Confederate lines. During the six weeks it was so situated, a number of Confederate regiments was recruited in the State.

On Sunday, August 31, 1862, the day after the battle at Richmond, Mr. David Walter Chenault, a prominent citizen of Madison County, then about thirty-six years old, went to Richmond from his country place, and on arriving at the town found that a great many young men of Madison and some of the neighboring counties were there, and anxious to join the Confederate Army, and that Messrs. Carey Hawkins, John D. Harris, Clifton Estill, Dr. Jennings, and several other prominent and influential citizens of the county, of Southern sentiment, had united in recommending him (Chenault) to General Kirby Smith as one of the most suitable men in Kentucky to recruit and organize a regiment of Kentuckians for the Confederate service. As Mr. Chenault's sympathies were already deeply engaged in the cause, he was easily persuaded to accept the commission; and