A Petulant Soldier, Red Oak, and Don Carlos Buell

The question has often been asked as to why General Don Carlos Buell behaved the way he did during the Battle of Perryville. In that battle, a third of Buell’s army engaged in a vicious fight with the forces under General Braxton Bragg and Buell, although only a few miles away, claimed to have scarcely heard the sounds of battle.

Be that as it may, was there more to the story? Well, in a word, yes and it actually goes back to the day before the battle when the general was riding with his staff along the Springfield-Perryville road following the troops of General Charles Gilbert’s corps. James Quinn of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a member of the Anderson Troop who served as a member of Buell's escort, was riding alongside Buell when Buell’s horse reared back and fell upon the general, incapacitating the army commander for days afterwards.  

    Quinn offered the following reminiscences originally to the editors of the Washington Sun. Quinn’s article was reprinted in the Louisville Courier-Journal’s January 14, 1889, edition. His article led me down the rabbit hole where I found out more than I bargained for about General Buell’s spirited warhorse, Red Oak, from the words of General Buell himself.

 

Buell's warhorse Red Oak was described by the general as " bright, handsome sorrel thoroughbred, 16 hands high and 6 years old. He had been on the turf and had made a reputation for unmanageableness on the course. I was not aware of his uncivil qualities when I bought him but I was soon made acquainted with them. He was refractory under fire and unsafe to the last." Red Oak seriously injured Buell the day before Perryville when he was spooked and fell backwards upon the general. Buell would spend the remainder of the campaign in an ambulance or in bed due to the injury. 

Corporal James Quinn, Anderson Troop

          I read your review of the personal memoirs of Gen. P.H. Sheridan yesterday in the Sunday Sun. I do not believe that Gen. Sheridan would knowingly do a brother officer any injury. He is too honorable for that; yet in part of the memoirs quoted by you relating to the Battle of Perryville, Ky., he does an injustice to Gen. Buell when he says that the commander was absent from the immediate scene of the conflict without giving the reason why. Gen. Buell was absent from the immediate scene of conflict and had Sheridan known the reason, he would have qualified the sentence, ‘Gen. Buell and his staff were conscious of the magnitude of the battle that had been fought.’

          The reason that Gen. Buell was not present on the field was this. The afternoon of the day before the Battle of Perryville [this would be Tuesday, October 7, 1862] I was riding with Gen. Buell and staff along the edge of the road for the road was filled with troops most of the time and as we were passing a house on the roadside, Gen. Buell noticed a lot of stragglers in the garden attached to the house. The general was a strict soldier and ordered the men out of the garden to join their regiments at once. 

Corporal James Quinn
Anderson Troop

    After some back talk, they left the garden and all moved on but one who stopped on the road. This angered the general and he rode his horse at him. The soldier caught the bridle reins and as he did so, the horse, a very spirited one named Red Oak, rose straight up and fell backward on the general. That Gen. Buell was not killed was a wonder.

          As it was, he was so severely bruised that he could not sit up or ride a horse for several days afterward. We put him in the first ambulance that came along and took him to camp in an open field about three-quarters of a mile back of where Sheridan was stationed. There was no water to be had: the springs, creeks, ponds, and wells were dry and the general suffered greatly before his bruised limbs were bathed. Water was at a premium, worth more than the best whiskey at the Hoffman House bar per drink. Gen. Buell was unable to leave his cot the next day and that and that only accounts for his absence from the immediate scene of the action at Perryville.

          Of course, the memoirs are written and published and the unfortunate Buell will have to suffer in silence for the accident of the day. It happened at a time when the Army of Ohio was on probation as it were and this accident keeping him from the field of action killed his hopes. A few weeks afterward he was relieved of command, never to be restored.

 

Major General Don Carlos Buell pictured with the key members of his staff including his chief of staff Colonel James B. Fry seated at far left and his assistant adjutant general Major John M. Wright (with mustache) standing to Buell's right. Wright and Fry would vigorously defend Buell's conduct of the Kentucky campaign after the war, Fry writing a book on the subject in 1884. 

          In Stephen D. Engle’s biography of Gen. Buell, Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All, the account of this incident is retold but the source was Buell’s chief of staff Colonel James B. Fry. While differing in a few details, Fry’s story largely corroborates what Corporal Quinn witnessed:

“There was water at Perryville but the soldiers would have to fight for it. Along the way, however, Buell’s unbending discipline almost did him in. Riding along the dusty and crowded Springfield-Perryville road on October 7, he observed some stragglers foraging in a garden near a farmhouse. He ordered the soldiers to return to their regiments immediately but one crass soldier refused to obey and continued washing his face with his canteen water. An angered Buell trotted over to the man and shouted at him. The frightened soldier sprang to his feet and reached for the bridle of Buell’s horse, Red Oak. This sudden movement spooked the horse which reared up and fell backward on top of Buell who was severely cut and bruised. It is a wonder he survived the spill. For days he could not sit or ride and was transported in an ambulance wagon wherever he went. In a spartan gesture, Buell refused to allow a doctor to wash his wound while water for his men was scarce but the men never knew of this self-sacrifice. Although lamed by the fall, Buell continued to direct the campaign.” ~ Stephen D. Engle, Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All

 

Major General Don Carlos Buell, commanding the Army of Ohio

          After the war, General James Grant Wilson communicated with General Buell about his war horse Red Oak, a subject to which the old general warmly replied at length with the following:

“You have touched a tender spot in my appreciation of our animal companions. It seems to me that I have been on horseback all my life and I esteem the use and management of a spirited horse under the saddle as the most exhilarating and health giving as well as the most adorning physical exercise to which man or woman can resort,” Buell noted.

“I suppose it is a fact that a horse which I rode during the Rebellion acquired a considerable degree of notoriety within the limit of his acquaintance as one might say. Not, however, for the generous traits that are usually ascribed to the war horse but for his vicious behavior as well perhaps as for his endurance and good looks. He was a thoroughbred, a bright, handsome sorrel, 16 hands high, 6 years old, and came to me with the name of Red Oak. He had been on the turf and had made a reputation for unmanageableness on the course. I was not aware of his uncivil qualities when I bought him but I was soon made acquainted with them,” the general continued.

 “Nevertheless, I continued to use him to the exclusion of a horse of better disposition, having an idea savoring somewhat of conceit that a good master can reform a bad horse. I succeeded to a considerable extent but he was refractory under fire and unsafe to the last. He was dangerous to any horse and rider that came alongside him so that on the march he was generally allowed the largest part of the road. Once, when tied to the picket line, he broke the arm of a passing soldier who innocently came within the reach of his heels. On another occasion, when he was bring brought out for me to mount, he stopped and with his ears laid back, deliberately lay down, evidently to rid himself of the rider,” he added.

          “The proceeding was so much milder than his usual way of showing dissatisfaction that it seemed like a well-meant warning to the groom, who had probably never mounted him before, and for whom constant association had given him a friendly feeling. I parted with him when I left the Army of Ohio. His new master was duly warned about him but was thrown and seriously hurt the first time- which was his last time- of mounting him. Red Oak was then turned over to the quartermaster’s department and had probably to make some atonement for his pranks,” Buell concluded.  

To learn more about General Buell's actions at Perryville, I would recommend Darryl Smith's article about the phenomena of the acoustic shadow which is featured on his Perryville Ponderings blog here. 

        

Sources:

“In Gen. Buell’s Defense: Why He Was Absent From the Field During the Battle of Perryville,” Corporal James Quinn, Anderson Troop, Louisville Courier-Journal (Kentucky), January 14, 1889, pg. 2

Engle, Stephen D. Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, pgs. 304-305 (James B. Fry to Buell, January 134, 1889, Buell Papers, Chicago Historical Society)

“Half Dozen War Horses: General Wilson Writes Entertainingly of the Steeds of Buell,” New Haven Morning Journal-Courier (Connecticut), June 17, 1901, pg. 4 (The article originally appeared in Our Animal Friends, a monthly magazine published by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)

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