The 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers and the Ride Around Rosecrans

Around dawn on December 30, 1862, General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry brigade fell upon a Federal wagon train along the Jefferson Pike not far from LaVergne, Tennessee. Private William C. Dodson of Co. G, 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers recalled the chaos of the scene as Wheeler’s men put the wagons to the torch.

“Prisoners running this way and that, hunting somebody to surrender to, army wagons blazing, guns opposing, mules braying, etc. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition and some were set fire to while the teams of 4-6 mules were yet hitched to them, and as the fire commenced to scorch the wheelers and the ammunition to explode, you can imagine about as wild a stampede as you can conceive of. When I first rode into the circus, I noticed a pair of miles that had broken loose from a wagon. They were still hitched to the double-tree; one had got entangled with the harness and was down with the other dragging him. As I rode out, I encountered the same pair of miles, one having dragged the other nearly a mile,” he wrote.

Private Dodson’s reminiscences of Wheeler’s first raid during the Stones River campaign first saw publication in the May 5, 1898, edition of the Atlanta Journal.

 

Private Dodson considered General Wheeler "an ideal cavalry commander" and noted that the general "never asked his men to go where he would not lead and for this we loved him and gladly rode with him into places where we knew all could not come out alive." 

          In response to your request for some reminiscences of General Wheeler, my old commander, I will say that I was captured in 1863 just preceding the Battle of Chickamauga so I cannot tell you from personal knowledge anything of his campaigns after that date. However, I was with General Wheeler before and after the Battle of Murfreesboro, it has occurred to me that possibly some of his doings during that memorable engagement might be of some interest to your readers. Of course, the recollections of a private must be more personal than historical and I trust I will not be accused of egotism if I am compelled to use the pronoun “I” rather frequently.

          The Battle of Murfreesboro has always seemed to me the most deliberately planned of any during the war and should have resulted in a greater victory than we achieved. General Bragg seemed to have selected his own ground, entrenched himself, and then sent his cavalry under General Wheeler to bring on the engagement. We skirmished with the Federals for several days, gradually falling back and “tolling” them on to the battleground already selected. Toward the last the enemy “tolled” rather too freely for comfort and on the afternoon before the battle we were glad to gallop through the infantry lines to escape a shower of bullets.

          The night preceding the battle we were marched a little distance from Murfreesboro and encamped. We were allowed to feed our horses, snatched a bite to eat and a little rest for ourselves, but no saddles were removed and profound silence was commanded. At about midnight, we were mounted and on the march, but what our destination was we had not the slightest idea. The campfires of the enemy were in plain view and it seemed that we were marching directly toward them. I remember thinking that if we were to charge the enemy’s line what a mess we would make of it in the darkness not being able to distinguish a Yankee from a Rebel. In fact, it was the darkest night I remember before or since. We literally could scarcely see our hands before our faces. We forded Stones River and I could not see the water but could hear it gurgling and hissing and could feel it halfway up my horse’s sides. We rode on during the night and as day began to dawn, I commenced looking for some landmark to indicate where we were. Imagine my amazement when I discovered we were in the outskirts of LaVergne which I knew to be 15 miles in the rear of the Federal army.

          Our regiment (Colonel John T. Morgan’s 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers) rode second in the command and it was not long before we heard music ahead. Any old soldier will know that by music I mean the clatter of musketry, punctured with an occasional boom of cannon. Presently a courier came back to order up another regiment, which was ours, and we went in with a whoop. The fighting was about over for there was but a small force to oppose us which we brushed away with scarcely a halt. But the fun had just commenced.

Colonel William S. Hawkins served on Wheeler's staff during the raid and one Federal recalls that Hawkins was the officer who administered the battlefield paroles to the prisoners. 

          Prisoners running this way and that, hunting somebody to surrender to, army wagons blazing, guns opposing, mules braying, etc. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition and some were set fire to while the teams of 4-6 mules were yet hitched to them, and as the fire commenced to scorch the wheelers and the ammunition to explode, you can imagine about as wild a stampede as you can conceive of. When I first rode into the circus, I noticed a pair of miles that had broken loose from a wagon. They were still hitched to the double-tree; one had got entangled with the harness and was down with the other dragging him. As I rode out, I encountered the same pair of miles, one having dragged the other nearly a mile. One of dismounted and cut the ham strings when muley jumped up as nimbly as if he had just been taking that sort of ride for his health and was not in the least injured.

          I was riding a borrowed horse and my first care was to provide one of my own at Uncle Sam’s expense. This I did, got him safely to camp, and rode him to the end which came for me less than a year after. Our orderly sergeant captured the finest mule I have ever seen, a magnificent iron gray about 16 hands high and beautifully proportioned. He was naturally very proud of his capture until someone yelled, “Tom, look at your mule’s eyes.” One glance and he dropped the halter like it was hot- the mule was blind as a bat!

          Of course, we were not there to stay as our position within a few miles of an army of 15,000 infantry was not one to hold. So we collected our prisoners and rode on to safe quarters. During this battle, General Wheeler’s command made two complete circuits around the rear of the Federal army, and partially a third which was not altogether successful as the Yankees had prepared for us and we were repulsed. [See "A Gallant Defense: The 1st Michigan Engineers and the Fight for LaVergne."]

          I was also with the second raid in which we lost some men but captured more prisoners than at the first. I started with the third raid but was compelled to return on account of a lame horse- the third that I had rode down in that campaign for Wheeler’s “critter company” didn’t know much about walking horses in those days, a gallop being our usual gait. On the second raid, among the prisoners was a fellow we had mounted on an old gray mare which had belonged to one of our company who had been killed in the melee. She was a very rough-gaited critter and while the other horses were in an easy lope, the old mare was in a long swinging trot and the poor Yankee with his feet out of the stirrups clinging for dear life to the saddle and bouncing about 6 inches from his seat at every jump the old mare made was ridiculous in the extreme. I rode up by his side and remarked, “My friend, it seems you are not accustomed to riding.” The poor fellow replied between gasps, “Yes, I’ve rode in a buggy and in a carriage but never rode like this.”

          It is not safe to trust memory after all these years but my recollection is that the results of this campaign of General Wheeler’s were the destruction of 1,010 wagons and contents, nearly a thousand prisoners, remounting many of his men who needed fresh horses, and the capture and destruction of a gunboat on the Cumberland River. We had the whole Federal army without rations for nearly three days. There was a citizen of Atlanta who was a paymaster in the Federal army and one day he remarked to me that at the Battle of Stones River he had $100,000 in his safe and couldn’t buy a pone of cornbread. Of course, I reminded him that I was one of the boys who had helped destroy his rations!

          As I said before, I can tell but little about General Wheeler’s subsequent campaigns but the above is a fair sample. To me, he was and is the ideal cavalry commander and I cannot help feeling personal pride in the fact that my old commander is one of the first for Uncle Sam to call into service. In my youthful eyes, such men as Wheeler, Stuart, and Wade Hampton “seemed giants and manhood’s more discriminating gaze see them undiminished.” General Wheeler never asked his men to go where he would not lead and for this, we loved him and gladly rode with him into places where we knew all could not come out alive.

Source:

“Soldiering with Wheeler on Murfreesboro Field,” Private William Cary Dodson, Co. G, 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers, Atlanta Journal (Georgia), May 5, 1898, pg. 8


To learn more about the Battle of Stones River, be sure to purchase a copy of my campaign study Hell by the Acre, recently awarded the Richard B. Harwell Award from the Atlanta Civil War Roundtable as best Civil War book of 2024. Available now through Savas Beatie. 

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