Front Cover
VOLUME LXXVIII Fall 2019 NUMBER 3
Alfred Waud’s Memphis images record black southerners’
struggle to grasp more autonomy and control over their own
lives as freed people (Waud,
“City of Memphis, Tennessee,
After the War,” Benjamin
L. Hooks Public Library,
Memphis.)
A publication of the Tennessee Historical Society in cooperation with the Tennessee Historical Commission.
106
“They broak to run & was shot”:
The Short, Turbulent Career of Calvin Brixey, First
Alabama & Tennessee Independent Vidette Cavalry (U.S.A.)
By Merritt R. Blakeslee
136
Alfred Waud Images of Freed People
in Reconstruction Era Memphis, 1866
By Earnestine Jenkins
168
A Matter of Black and White:
Edmund Orgill, J. E. Walker, and the John Gaston Hospital
Controversy in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1956
by Elizabeth Gritter
Back Cover
Union militia commander
Calvin Brixey garrisoned his
company first at Altamont,
then at Tracy City. Tracy
City briefly became a linchpin of General William S.
Rosecrans’s strategy for invading East Tennessee. (“View of
military post Tracy City, Tenn.”
Library of Congress)
194
Contributors
195
Book Reviews
206
Guidelines
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responsibility for statements, whether fact or of opinion, made by contributors.
Copyright ©2019 by The Tennessee Historical Society
“They broak to run & was shot:
The Short, Turbulent Career of
Calvin Brixey, First Alabama &
Tennessee Independent Vidette
Cavalry (U.S.A.)
106
T
he Tullahoma Campaign jolt-
pying force that it left behind was narrowly
ed to an abrupt halt in the
concentrated along the line of the Nashville
first days of July 1863, when
& Chattanooga Railroad and in the largest
Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, out-
adjacent towns, depriving the surrounding
flanked by William Rosecrans’s Army of
country of whatever small measure of order
the Cumberland, executed a “retrograde
had existed prior to its arrival.
movement”—to borrow the euphemism
The general lawlessness that ensued
of the moment—withdrawing over the
permitted not only the settling of old
Cumberland Plateau, across the Tennessee
scores but also widespread private
River, and entirely out of Middle Tennessee.
marauding under the pretext of sup-
Because the Confederate force that con-
porting one side or the other. On the
trolled Tennessee east of Murfreesboro from
mountainous terrain of the southern
August 1862 to June 1863 possessed effec-
Cumberland Plateau, the absence of an
tive, wide-ranging cavalry, it had exercised
effective military presence during the sec-
a degree of control over Middle Tennessee
ond half of 1863 and throughout 1864
that the Army of the Cumberland, when it
allowed free rein not only to unvarnished
paused for a brief six weeks at the foot of
outlaws and to guerrillas of both parties
the plateau to resupply for its advance into
but to Union irregulars operating under
East Tennessee, possessed neither the desire
color of military authority. These forces
nor the resources to replicate. And when
contended with one another and with
Rosecrans’s army, rested and resupplied,
the civilian populace, transforming the
followed the Confederates east, the occu-
region into one front in what has come to
On the southern Cumberland Plateau, the absence of a military presence during the sec-
Calvin Brixey
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
BY Merritt R. Blakeslee
ond half of 1863 through 1864 allowed free rein not only to outlaws and to guerrillas of
both parties but to Union irregulars like Calvin Brixey operating under color of military
authority. (Alfred R. Waud, “Guerilla,” Library of Congress)
107
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Joanna McGehee Brixey supported her
len horses.12 What he was about between
and... they may handle you a little more
war.1
household, which included four sons and
June 1862 and his reappearance in Grundy
roughly than I have done.’” Ironically, the
One of the most detested figures to
an older woman (probably her mother-
County a year later remains cloaked in
gentlemen from Chattanooga were, by the
fill this vacuum was Calvin Brixey, who
in-law), on a widow’s pension of $15 per
mystery. But Bragg’s retreat from Middle
standard that Brixey would shortly set,
became notorious for his activities as the
month that she supplemented by sewing
Tennessee in late June and early July of
treated with rare courtesy and fared better
leader of a band of “lawless desperadoes
and occasionally taking in boarders.7 In
1863 left disorder and lawlessness in its
by far at his hands than would his later vic-
[who] roamed Cumberland Mountain
1860, Calvin, aged 21, his wife Martha
wake. The Cumberland Plateau became,
tims. Nevertheless, the journalist, outraged
preying upon the defenseless citizenry.”2
Swann Brixey, and small daughter were liv-
in Stephen Ash’s topological division of the
by Brixey’s “imperturbable impudence,”
Brixey was a rank opportunist. His brief
ing in Joanna’s home in Manchester, in the
occupied South, a “no-man’s-land” where
appealed to the Confederate cavalry that
service under Union colors proceeded not
shadow of the Cumberland Plateau, where
restraint vanished, the laws and conven-
regularly traversed Grundy County to
from political or ideological conviction but
Calvin was working as an “artist,” that is,
tions of civil society no longer operated to
“keep a sharp lookout for these tory plun-
from the unparalleled opportunities for
a “daguerreotype artist,” likely the assis-
keep bandits at bay, and life for the moun-
derers and especially for Calvin Brixey. A
self-enrichment and the unbridled exer-
tant to the town’s only photographer.8 But
tains’ inhabitants entered a nightmarish
rope is entirely too good for such an infa-
cise of self-indulgent violence offered by
however well educated his family may have
period when pillage, persecution, and,
mous scoundrel.”14
his expedient allegiance. During his short,
been, Calvin, although he writes a legible,
too often, murder became the order of the
When Brixey next appeared, it was at
violent career from 1862 to 1864, Brixey
carefully formed hand, expresses himself in
day. The region was suddenly alive with
Beersheba Springs, a resort community
was by turns a Confederate infantryman,
a primitive and unlettered idiom.
outlaws preying on the local populace, and
perched on the rim of the Cumberland
13
a deserter, an unaligned brigand, and the
In July 1861, Brixey enlisted in the
Brixey promptly cemented his reputation
Plateau some thirty miles south of
commander of a company of Union mili-
Sixteenth Tennessee Infantry (C.S.A.).9
as one of the most notorious of these pred-
McMinnville, the site of an elegant hotel
tia that devoted itself chiefly to marauding,
His enlistment was not coerced. Tennessee
ators.
and twenty-five to thirty privately owned
preying on individual citizens (Unionists
had left the Union only a month earlier,
The first report of Brixey’s depreda-
summer cottages. As the Tullahoma
and secessionists alike), while largely avoid-
and the first Confederate Conscript Act
tions is an item from the Chattanooga
Campaign slouched toward its dismal con-
ing the dangers of unit-to-unit military
was still nine months away. In October,
Daily Rebel, reprinted in the Memphis Daily
clusion, the Springs became a place of ref-
combat and the strictures of military dis-
Joanna Brixey’s federal widow’s pension was
Appeal of July 18, 1863, which opened
uge for Southern sympathizers.
cipline; and for many years after the War
stopped, apparently because of her sons’
with an impassioned denunciation of “a
On July 20, a force of forty men sur-
“Brixeyite” was in current usage in Coffee
enlistment in the Confederate Army.
10
class of men called cow-boys, in our first
rounded Beersheba Springs, picketing
and Grundy counties as a term of bitter
This stoppage must have worked a severe
war for independence... [whose] sole object
the roads, while a dozen—“a few of them
opprobrium.
hardship not only on Calvin’s mother but
was plunder, and [who] robbed indiscrimi-
Yankees, the remainder wild desperate men
Calvin L. Brixey was born in Coffee
on his wife and daughter, presumably still
nately the loyalist, the tory, and the patri-
of the mountains, robbers and outlaws”—
County on November 11, 1838, to a fam-
living with their mother-in-law; and their
ot.” Chief among the present-day “cow-
entered the village and set about pillag-
ily both prosperous and educated.4 Calvin’s
plight can only have deepened when, in
boys,” the article declared, were Brixey and
ing the Beersheba Springs Hotel, where
father had been the County Surveyor
December, Martha Brixey gave birth to the
his band, who, in Grundy County, had
articles from the unoccupied cottages were
of Coffee County. But Calvin grew up
couple’s second daughter.
relieved “several gentlemen on their way to
stored. One of the residents, Lucy Virginia
3
5
11
fatherless, for John Oliver Brixey died of
Sometime before June 22, 1862, Brixey
Chattanooga” of their purses, then, with
Smith French, recorded in her diary, “They
smallpox in Mexico City in 1848 while
deserted from the Sixteenth Tennessee,
intolerable arrogance, issued them safe-
call whatever is there ‘government prop-
serving as a lieutenant in the Mexican
then garrisoned at Corinth, Mississippi,
conduct passes because, Brixey explained,
erty’ and seem to consider it their right-
War. Following her husband’s death,
reportedly taking with him a string of sto-
“‘[t]here is another lot of my boys on ahead,
ful prey.”15 The serial looting of Beersheba
6
Calvin Brixey
108
be called the Upper South’s internal civil
109
In July 1863, a force of men surrounded Beersheba Springs and set about pillaging the Beersheba Springs Hotel, starting several months of serial looting. Brixey was one of the looters
(Beersheba Springs Hotel, 1936, HABS, Library of Congress)
“knowledge of the terrain, the Rebel ren-
(“First Alabama & Tennessee”), and set
dezvous points, and the identity of Rebel
about raising a company.
sympathizers.”23
18
After turn-
ing on their erstwhile comrades in arms,
With the departure of Rosecrans’ Army
Brixey and his henchmen, now organized
of the Cumberland from Middle Tennessee
as Company D, “were joined by some oth-
at the end of August 1863, the task of
ers, criminals, and worse and they roamed
guarding the strategically vital Nashville &
the mountains from Stevenson, Ala. to
Chattanooga Railroad (and its branch lines
McMinnville, Coffee Co., etc. They stole,
to McMinnville, Fayetteville, and Tracy
robbed and killed many people.”19
City) against raids by Confederate cavalry
The First Alabama & Tennessee
and mounted guerrillas was left largely to
was recruited from Unionists in the
infantry regiments of green recruits, often
Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee and
conscripts, deemed unfit for front-line
Northern Alabama following the Union
duty. Between Tullahoma and Bridgeport,
occupation of Middle Tennessee in July
responsibility for protecting these infantry
1863, and its numbers were swelled by
units fell to Colonel William B. Stokes’s
Confederate deserters during Bragg’s
Fifth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.A.), a locally
retreat.
Its members were not home
recruited regiment of regular cavalry, sup-
guards, “[whose] primary mission...
ported intermittently by Brixey’s Company
was to make their communities safe for
D, which also scouted, recruited, and
Unionists,”21 although they were frequent-
served as guides for regular units.24
20
ly referred to as such. Nor were they a regu-
In operation, the First Alabama &
lar field cavalry unit organized under the
Tennessee was a disjointed collection of
auspices of a single state government and
independent companies that reported to
operating within the established command
no regimental commanding officers, that
structure of the Federal army. Instead, the
never operated cooperatively as a regiment,
First Alabama & Tennessee were twelve-
and that never served at the front. Because
month troops raised for “state defense,”
the First Alabama & Tennessee entirely
Springs would continue through July and
said) the yanks, their former associates[,]
short-timers like the three-month and
lacked any formal command structure
to the end of the year, and Brixey was one
17
and the Southern scouts all against them.”
100-day companies that Tennessee’s mili-
above the company level, no officer in the
of the looters.16 In late July, however, there
Among these was Brixey, who sought com-
tary governor also authorized in 1863.22
regiment outranked Brixey, a captain and
was a realignment of allegiances among the
petitive advantage over his adversaries by
Occupying a gray middle ground between
company commander. In consequence,
bushwhackers. French wrote, “We are told
aligning himself, however loosely, with the
a duly constituted state regiment and an
Company D was subject only to whatever
that the gang [operating in the area] have
Union occupation force.
uncommissioned band of irregulars, the
superior authority was furnished by the
had a disruption among themselves, one
On July 29, 1863, Brixey enlisted as a
First Alabama & Tennessee was a volunteer
field unit with which it was cooperating
party joining the Yankees and informing
second lieutenant in a regiment of Union
militia recruited by the Federals as a local
“independently” at the time, an authority
on the rest; this remainder have now (it is
militia, the First Alabama & Tennessee
antiguerrilla force because of its members’
that was, as the incident of Judge James
Calvin Brixey
110
Independent Vidette Cavalry (U.S.A.)
111
R. Chilcoat will illustrate, both temporary
disposition of the said Bricksys Company
and tenuous.
which will give relief to the country.”
Brixey recruited the members of
According to the petitioners, Brixey’s com-
Company D from the Pelham and Tracy
pany had “assumed authority to arrest
City areas of Grundy County, ostensi-
quiet citizens without any charge whatever
bly to cooperate with the Union forces
[, and] ha[d] taken private property such
on Cumberland Mountain. Like Brixey,
as young horses and mules (not in any way
many of his comrades were deserters
wanted for the service) and appropriated
from the Southern ranks; and it is prob-
them to their own private use.”28 Brixey
able that more than a few had, like Brixey,
would exact revenge on at least one of
been marauding immediately before join-
those who signed the petition. Anderson
ing the Union colors. The “Brixeyites,” as
S. Goodman, a farmer, 53 years old, and
they came to be called, operated for sev-
a discharged Confederate soldier, was
eral months as a company of “independent
murdered by three of Brixey’s henchmen,
scouts” before being summarily disbanded.
Martin Van Buren Phipps, James F.M.
It is said (credibly but without citation of
Conatser (“Conatzy”), and an unidentified
authority) that within six months of being
McChristian.29
112
organized, Brixey’s company had mur-
After Wagner’s Second Brigade left
dered forty-eight citizens on and around
Pelham, Brixey garrisoned his company
Cumberland Mountain.
first at Altamont, then at Tracy City, a
26
Brixey found Tracy City a convenient base for his unit and its “scouts” throughout the surrounding country. The patrols preyed without distinction upon Unionists and secessionists.
As in much of southern Appalachia,
coal mining center and rail terminus. In
the inhabitants of Grundy, Marion, and
August 1863, as General Rosecrans made
Coffee counties, where Company D oper-
his cautious preparations to follow Bragg
ated in 1863, were sharply and bitterly
across the Tennessee River, Tracy City
divided, and Brixey’s band exploited this
briefly became a linchpin of Rosecrans’s
fault line for its own purposes. During
strategy for invading East Tennessee. He
Company, which operated the coal mines,
where it remained through October and
the month of August 1863, Company D
determined to establish supply depots at
had been placed under the authority of the
November.
was garrisoned at Pelham, where it served
Tracy City, Stevenson, and Bridgeport,
occupying Union forces, and the mines
During its posting to Tracy City,
as scouts for Brigadier General George D.
from which the Army of the Cumberland
were returned to operation to supply not
Brixey’s company foraged heavily on the
Wagner, commanding the Army of the
could be resupplied in its advance on
only the hearths of Nashville but the fire-
inhabitants of the lower Cumberland
Cumberland’s Second Brigade.27 During
Chattanooga. 30 At the end of August,
boxes of the locomotives on the Nashville
Plateau and the surrounding communi-
this brief one-month period, Brixey’s com-
when the Army of the Cumberland began
& Chattanooga Railroad. In consequence,
ties. All armies in the field engage in forag-
pany, which had been partially raised at
its move towards East Tennessee, the sup-
the Union command judged the continu-
ing, but the extent of the Brixeyites’ for-
Pelham, so thoroughly oppressed Pelham’s
ply depot at Tracy City was emptied of
ing presence of a garrison necessary to
aging was unusual given that Company
civilian population that on September 1,
its stores; and the original rationale for
protect the mines, the railroad, and the
D was not, strictly speaking, in the field.
twenty-four citizens swore out a complaint
maintaining a garrison there disappeared.
telegraph at Tracy City. In late September,
The town and its garrison were provisioned
petitioning General Wagner for “some
By then, however, the Sewanee Mining
Company D was ordered to Tracy City,
with supplies brought up from Nashville
(“View of military post Tracy City, Tenn.” Library of Congress)
Calvin Brixey
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
25
113
and Decherd via the Sewanee Mining
sergt & said that he was in or near the
Brixey’s routine, systematic execution in
ning and they began shooting. They shot
Company Railroad, while the local popu-
Suthern forse & as soon as they come
late 1863 of prisoners who “broke to run
him and then ran their horses over him.”
lation of subsistence farmers was hard
to his presants he would “Join them.”
& w[ere] shot dead” bears little relation
Leaving Elisha’s body propped against
pressed to feed itself.31 Nevertheless, when,
We taken him under arrest & shortly
to the increasingly heated clashes between
a tree in the falling snow, “[t]he bush-
in 1871, the Federal government instituted
he broke to run & some of the guards
these antagonists, clashes in which Brixey’s
whackers then went and told Jim Bryan
the Southern Claims Commission to pay
shot him “very dead.”
unit took almost no part. And it stands in
they had ‘shot a damn bushwhacker, and
sharp contrast to the treatment that Brixey
he had some good boots if he wanted
compensation to loyalists whose property
had been officially requisitioned or oth-
Following this encounter, Brixey’s band
was accorded when, after being captured,
them.’” From there, the gang rode to the
erwise lawfully taken by the U.S. Army,
continued on to Manchester to carry out
he was tried by a court martial before being
home of Iverson Ogles, a neighbor of the
Brixey’s company figured prominently in
its original assignment. On its return “we
hanged. Moreover, Brixey’s cold-blooded,
Powells, whom they also killed.35
the claims filed by residents of Grundy
was attacted by three bushwhackers, & we
disingenuous account of his method for
Brixey was not, however, without his
County, claiming compensation not just
captured three of them. They also broke
dealing with “bushwhackers” passes silent-
supporters. Many years later, R.M. Van
for mounts for Brixey’s men but for prov-
to run & was shot dea[d].” The company
ly over the thievery that certainly accom-
Noy, who had been Iverson Ogles’s “near
ender for men and mounts alike.
resumed its ride back to Tracy City and
panied, and was likely the precipitating
neighbor” on the Viola road outside of
Tracy City was, however, little more
“on the way captured two men that acknol-
motive for, these “scouts.” Indeed, it is a
Manchester, gave an account of Ogles’s
than a convenient base from which Brixey’s
laged to ‘bushwhacking’ us before they
fair assumption that many of the unfortu-
killing by Brixey’s band that paints Brixey
unit conducted “scouts” throughout the
broak to run & was shot.” Summarizing
nate “bushwhackers” were, like the “gentle-
in a gentler light. In Van Noy’s account,
surrounding country, ostensibly in search
the day’s grisly work—“only one scoutt
men on their way to Chattanooga” and the
“[Brixey’s company’s] headquarters was on
of “bushwhackers” who menaced Unionists
among the many that we have taken”—
residents of Beersheba Springs, simply vic-
the mountain near Altamont, and their
or Federal troops. In fact, on these patrols
Brixey explained the numbing succession
tims whom Brixey’s band had singled out
business was to scout or ride about over the
Brixey pursued an indiscriminate campaign
of prisoners who “broak to run” and were
to rob.
country to keep down lawlessness.... [After
of plunder and murder, preying without
shot down from behind with this cynical
In mid-October 1863, Brixey’s band
t]he Federal army under Gen. Rosecranz
distinction upon Unionists and secession-
observation: “On account of the dread-
made another scout into Coffee County,
had advanced southward... there was then
ists under the pretext of suppressing guer-
ful name that we bare, or some unknown
where, on October 14, it appeared at
no local government about Manchester
rilla activity. A sullen brutality permeates
cause all such men had rather risk being
the house of Mary Ann Powell, a recent
and the Federal cavalry was intended to
Brixey’s actions from this period, and with
shott than to stand a Trial.”
widow. Powell sent her six-year-old son
keep order and protect the inhabitants
114
33
it a sovereign disdain for military authority.
By the beginning of 1864, the regular
Thomas to hide while she tried to repel
and their dread was the bushwhacker.”
Here is Brixey’s chillingly matter-of-fact
Union cavalry and the Confederate parti-
the marauders, but they burned the
According to Van Noy, Brixey’s men killed
recitation of a typical “scout” on the skirts
sans and guerrillas operating against one
house, taking her feather bed and best
Ogles, who was turkey hunting in a white
of the Cumberland Plateau:
another on the Cumberland Plateau and
mare before they rode away. Returning
oak swamp outside of Manchester, when
in the region of Middle Tennessee lying
the following week, the band cornered
they mistook him for a bushwhacker. He
I was ordered to go to Coffee Coty.
immediately to its west were slowly aban-
Elisha Powell, Thomas’ sixteen-year-old
concluded that “[Brixey’s] company... com-
to arrest some men that had “bush-
doning the niceties of “civilized” warfare—
brother. Elisha, who was on his way to
mitted some gross outrages, such as the
whacked” some of my company...
including the paroling of prisoners—and,
buy a cow from another farmer, was car-
killing of Iverson Oglesby [sic] and young
[Reaching the valley,] we come ac[r]oss
in response to perceived atrocities by the
rying $21. After robbing him, the gang,
Powell... but I have been told that Capt.
a man that had taken the oath & after-
other side, were beginning to execute cap-
repeating its all-too-familiar routine, “told
Brixey denied having any knowledge of
wards drew up his gun to shute my first
tured and wounded enemy fighters. But
him to ‘run for his life.’ He started run-
either killing.”36
34
Calvin Brixey
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
32
115
declaring that units like those operat-
mounted troopers be sent from Tracy City
action,” passing from General William D.
ing on Cumberland Mountain, who “are
to Fayetteville to guard working parties on
Whipple to General George H. Thomas to
composed mainly of deserters from Bragg’s
the railroad after the regular infantry com-
General Joseph Hooker to General Henry
army,” should be disbanded “or a corrective
pany assigned to the task was attacked by
W. Slocum, commander of the Twelfth
applied that will keep them in bounds,”
Confederate guerrillas while rounding up
Army Corps at Tullahoma, whom it finally
as the home guard system, “however well
“contrabands,” fugitive slaves who had
reached on January 16.
intended, [risks] running into highway
sought refuge with the Union military, to
But already, on January 8, General
robbery and piracy.” As an example of these
serve on the working parties.39 That same
Knipe had released Brixey from arrest and
excesses, he cited two militia units, includ-
day, Brixey, still at Tracy City, received a
ordered him, with ten of his men, to go to
ing “one company under Capt Bricksey
captain’s commission, although he had
Tracy City to pick up the stragglers from
on Cumberland Mountain,” that “are rob-
been using the rank for some months
his company. Knipe gave Brixey explicit
bing stealing and plundering both parties
before that date.40
orders to return to Decherd with the strag-
Over the next two months, the unruly
glers within five days, and Brixey dutifully
ers] alike and have been burning houses
and insubordinate conduct of Brixey’s com-
departed, taking with him “30 horses &
and committing outrages that are truly
pany provoked increasingly angry condem-
mules, more than he had men to mount,
shocking.” It would, however, be several
nation from the Union authorities. On
also two teams”—and simply failed to
months before pleas like Edwards’s were
January 17, 1864, Colonel Samuel Ross,
return. Thereupon, the cohort that he had
heeded.
acting in Knipe’s stead as commanding
left behind at Decherd, which was “with-
Brixey’s company operated from its
officer at Decherd, reported that “while on
out discipline and a lawless set of men”
base at Tracy City from late September or
duty on the Fayetteville R.R. the conduct
who had been “committing depredations
early October until early December 1863.
of [Brixey] and men was such as to deserve
on a number of citizens in this neighbor-
On November 26, it engaged a party of
the censure of his Commanding Officer,
hood,” quietly slipped away “for parts
guerrillas near Beersheba Springs, report-
they having behaved in an outrageous man-
unknown.”43 On January 17, Colonel Ross
edly capturing fifteen or twenty and dis-
ner, plundering families whose loyalty is
informed his superiors with galling frustra-
persing the rest.38 No further details were
undoubted.”41 Earlier that month, Colonel
tion, “[T]he present whereabouts of Capt.
recorded, and the encounter was sufficient-
James L. Selfridge at Decherd had placed
Brixey, or his men, I am utterly unable to
ly insignificant to have escaped mention in
Brixey and his band, some forty-five strong,
ascertain, although citizens report them to
Already on September 30, 1863,
the journal of Lucy French, a careful dia-
under arrest “for disobedience of orders” in
be prouling about in squads through the
Richard M. Edwards, a former legisla-
rist who described other skirmishes in the
their conduct at Fayetteville. In a tone of
mountains and in Sequatchee Valley.”44
tor and former commander of the Fourth
vicinity of Beersheba Springs. This is the
deep disgust, Colonel Selfridge wrote that
Brixey and his company did not reappear
Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.A.), had written
only engagement in which Brixey’s compa-
Brixey’s company “are unprovided with any
at Decherd until January 22, upon which
to Andrew Johnson, military governor of
ny is known to have clashed with an enemy
shelter, and under no discipline, and are of
they were peremptorily ordered to report
Tennessee, to inveigh against the creation
party of any size.
no service here whatever.” Selfridge con-
to General Slocum.45
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
37
116
In early January 1864, Brixey and his men
were arrested at Decherd “for disobedience
of orders.” Unaware of the arrest, General
Joseph Knipe released Brixey to go to Tracy
City to pick up stragglers from his company.
(Knipe, Library of Congress)
of additional units of “troops for state
On December 9, 1863, General Joseph
cluded with the recommendation “that they
On January 31 at Tullahoma, Brixey
defence” and “‘home guards.’” In addi-
F. Knipe, commander of the First Brigade,
be ordered to the front where their service
sent a self-justificatory account of himself
tion to arguing their military ineffective-
First Division, Twelfth Army Corps, sta-
might be of more benefit.”42 Selfridge’s letter
to the Assistant Adjutant General, a part
ness, Edwards pointed to their excesses,
tioned at Decherd, requested that Brixey’s
made its way up the chain of command “for
of which, his recitation of his “scout” to
Calvin Brixey
[i.e., Unionists and Southern sympathiz-
117
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Plateau and its western skirts were the the-
$30,000 levied by the Union authorities
Despite this warning, Chilcoat appealed
Brixey’s “report” is a transparent effort to
ater of repeated engagements between reg-
for the killing of three federal soldiers who
to the regiment’s colonel to have his prop-
defend himself against an accusation of
ular cavalry, partisan forces, and guerrilla
fell into the hands of guerrillas.
erty restored, which, upon the command-
insubordination, for in it he describes what
units. The regularly constituted military
A story from this period illustrates both
ing officer’s order, Brixey did, albeit “with
he conceives to be his company’s contri-
units included the Fifth Tennessee Cavalry
Brixey’s essentially vicious and duplicitous
apparent reluctance.” Thereupon, Brixey
bution to the war effort. He makes three
(U.S.A.) under Colonel William Stokes.
character and the fact that his status as a
secretly dispatched some of his men by
points in his defense. First, he cites his
The partisan units included the detached
member of the United States military acted
a back road to intercept the judge on his
action against the enemy, both his scout-
or stranded Confederate forces under
as no check on, but instead facilitated, his
return to Fayetteville, where they “t[ook]
ing for General Wagner and his heroic
Colonel John M. Hughs, Twenty-fifth
depredations. When, on April 28, 1864,
him off the road into the woods down into
repression of Confederate “bushwhackers,”
Tennessee Infantry (C.S.A.); Major Willis
Company G, accompanied by Brixey’s
a ravine, shot him seven times and killed
although he neglects to mention any ser-
Scott Bledsoe, Fourth Tennessee Cavalry
company, moved east to join the Atlanta
both his horses.” Brixey then pushed on to
vice his company might have rendered the
(C.S.A.); Lieutenant Colonel Thomas B.
Campaign, Brixey’s ruthlessness managed
Tullahoma ahead of the Third Wisconsin,
Union cause by guarding the mines at Tracy
Murray, Twenty-second Tennessee Infantry
to shock Captain Julian Wisner Hinkley,
which did not learn of the shooting until
City. Second, while “[m]any other such
Battalion (C.S.A.); and others. The guerril-
who had served as Lincoln County’s pro-
that night. The regiment’s colonel sent a
cases [like the ‘scout’ to Coffee County]
la bands included those of Unionist Tinker
vost marshal and was no friend to the
detail to investigate the judge’s murder, but
has occured since our organ[iz]atson, but
Dave Beaty and Southern sympathizer
county’s secessionist planters.
by then Brixey’s company had left for “the
one thing shore I have never ‘under no sir-
Champ Ferguson. These various units
As they were leaving Fayetteville,
cumstances’ allowed my men to impose on
clashed and clashed again in the shadow of
Brixey’s men stole two horses and two young
Women & Children & never to insult a
the Cumberland Plateau, each time with a
Negro boys belonging to Judge Chilcoat, a
Three days after Judge Chilcoat’s mur-
man that has always bin loyal to the U.S.
different mix of participants. Conspicuous
prominent citizen, “who,” wrote Hinkley,
der, in an attempt to do more than noth-
Government.” And finally, “My men have
by their absence from this mêlée were
“had been of much assistance to me in the
ing about Brixey’s intolerable conduct,
bin badly cloathed & badly armed & never
Brixey and his men, whose war record con-
provost marshal’s office in restoring civil
General Whipple, the Assistant Adjutant
more than half mounted, & up to this date
sists chiefly of “policing” the citizenry of
government.” Private Willard, another
General, telegraphed General Alvan C.
have never bin payed.” In other words,
the region, foraging, pillaging, and sum-
member of the Third Wisconsin, recalled
Gillem, then in charge of the construc-
while seeking to exonerate himself of the
marily executing “bushwhackers.”
that Judge Chilcoat “was a fine man... and
tion of the Nashville and Northwestern
46
47
mountains of East Tennessee,” “and nothing more could be done.”49
oft-repeated charge that he had preyed on
It is not recorded that the Union
was noted for his good humor and great fac-
Railroad from Kingston Springs (west of
loyal Unionists, he manages to imply that
authorities took any disciplinary action
ulty of telling stories. He was a great favor-
Nashville) to Johnsonville on the Tennessee
if, in fact, he had once or twice done so, it
against Brixey following his unit’s disap-
ite with the men and spent many evenings
River, requesting him to “take charge of the
was out of the necessity to feed, equip, and
pearance and reappearance in January
in our quarters. He was a secessionist and
Companies of Tenn. Cavalry commanded
pay his men so that they could continue to
1864 and his command was ordered back
48
had the moral courage to admit the fact.”
by Captains Brixey and Hampton, and
do battle for the Union.
to Fayetteville, “one of the favorite haunts
Upon discovering the theft, the judge rode
order them where you can best control
What is perhaps most remarkable about
for bushwhackers.” There it remained until
after the departing Federals, confronted
them.”50
Brixey’s account of himself and his com-
the end of April 1864, cooperating with
Brixey, and demanded the return of his
But Gillem was no more successful
pany is the complete absence of any men-
the local provost marshal and Company
property. Brixey replied that he “‘could not
in curbing Brixey and his men than his
tion of an engagement with an enemy unit.
G of the Third Wisconsin Infantry to sup-
have his horses, and that if he came near
other commanders had been; for in early
Yet in the second half of 1863 and the first
press guerrilla activity in Lincoln County
him again or attempted to see the colo-
June Andrew Johnson, Military Governor
half of 1864, the Southern Cumberland
and to assist in collecting reparations of
nel about them, that he would kill him.’”
of Tennessee, peremptorily ordered that
Calvin Brixey
118
Coffee County, has been quoted above.
119
Brixey be sent to Stevenson, Alabama, dis-
Brixey’s letter was forwarded to Andrew
Elk River near Marble Hill. The Brixeyites
exploded in a drunken fury, proclaiming
missed from the service, and immediately
Johnson for comment, and on June 28
relieved Vanzant of his horse and money
that he “individually”
arrested and tried “for his long contin-
Johnson, after consulting with General
and instructed him to go home. Then,
ued offenses.”51 Following Brixey’s arrest,
Whipple of the Adjutant General’s Office,
“concluding the punishment was not suffi-
had command of this county—that the
the entire First Alabama & Tennessee
replied, “Capt. Brixie is charged with many
cient,” “Lieut” Conatser (“Conatchie”) and
Rebels might, it was true, come the next
Independent Vidette Cavalry, including
cases of murder, robbery, &c. It is believed
one or two more overtook and murdered
day & send him galloping to Hell, but
Company D, was, on June 16, 1864, mus-
that the best manner of controlling Capt.
him, leaving orders that any who buried
he’d be G-d d--d if he did not rule this
tered out of service at Stevenson in conse-
Brixie is to keep him in prison until he can
him would suffer the same fate.57
country now, that Jesse Abernathy and
quence of the excesses of Brixey and oth-
be brought to trial, which will be done so
On September 1, 1864, exactly one
his father were both G-d d--d Secesh,
ers.52
soon as the necessary evidence can be col-
year after the citizens of Pelham had pro-
and if they did not leave the country
lected.”54 Astonishingly, Brixey was released
tested his pillaging to the military authori-
he’d be G-d d--d if he didn’t kill them,
from confinement the following day.55
ties, Brixey was captured near Decherd by
that he didn’t intend any Secesh should
live in this country.60
Brixey was not present at his men’s mus-
120
in the Department of the Cumberland’s
On July 21, Brixey, now a free man,
a troop of Confederate cavalry belong-
Military Prison at Nashville awaiting trial.
wrote a second letter (the first is lost)
ing to Colonel Paul Anderson’s Fourth
He was held with “no charges preferred”
to General William Rosecrans explain-
Tennessee Cavalry (C.S.A.), itself attached
Brixey and his comrades “arrested”
and was informed by General Gillem that
ing that “I was arrested on the 8 of last
to Joseph Wheeler’s command. The cir-
Abernathy and another youth and rode
he would be tried by the “sivel Authority”
month for the mischief of my men, but
cumstances of his capture were described
away from the schoolhouse in the direc-
rather than by a military tribunal. On June
am now released.” While his men had
in two complementary narratives, each
tion of Decherd with the two young men
23, the prisoner addressed a panicky appeal
been formally mustered out of the service
proffered by a narrator with a specific, self-
in their custody. Ordinarily, this would
to Major General George H. Thomas, com-
at Stevenson, Brixey contended sophisti-
interested objective and each embellished
have been the prelude to Brixey’s taking the
mander of the Army of the Cumberland,
cally that “I have not bin yet on account of
in furtherance of that objective. According
captives to a remote place and there forc-
pleading abjectly for the opportunity to
my arrest,” and was, thus, still a commis-
to the first of these, on September 1, Brixey
ing them to “break to run,” as he had done
make his case in person to Thomas “that I
sioned officer in good standing, eligible to
appeared at the Hawkerville schoolhouse,
so often before. But two hours after Brixey
am... inocent of any violation of the Armey
raise a company. He requested permission
only five miles from Pelham, accompa-
left the schoolhouse with his captives,
Regulations of conciquence... [and] not
to reconstitute the disbanded company
nied by Jim Conatser (“Kernatzer”) and
a company of Confederate cavalry rode
gilty of any charge what ever.” His reason
of “thos bad men of mine” and rejoin
Martin Phipps and a “good deal under the
through Hawkerville from the direction of
for appealing directly to Thomas, Brixey
the army. Brixey proposed to deploy his
influence of spirits.”59 The school master,
Decherd carrying Brixey with them as their
declared, was his fear of being transferred
band to the murderous Kansas Territory,
Jonathan P. Hindman, later attested that
prisoner, although Conatser and Phipps
to the custody of the civilian authorities,
explaining, “My men is too rough for this
Brixey, who “was a drinking character
had escaped or been released. The troop-
for “if that is done I will not live two days.”
country & they are all anxious to get to
& had the reputation of being a violent
ers had intercepted Brixey on the Decherd
He explained that because “I Bushwhacked
the western frontiers.”56
bloody man,” had come in search of Jesse
road and had liberated Abernathy and his
classmate. 61
th
58
Conscript hunters before this armey [the
But as soon as Brixey rejoined his men,
M. Abernathy, “an orderly, inoffensive &
Army of the Cumberland] advanced [into
he resumed his brigandage on and around
industrious pupil,” whom Brixey accused
The company of Fourth Tennessee
Middle Tennessee]” and because “[I] have
the Cumberland Plateau. In August as
of drinking his brandy. Abernathy protest-
Cavalry (C.S.A.) that rescued Abernathy
faught the Guirillers allover Middle Tenn.,”
Brixey’s band was on its way into Lincoln
ed that the brandy had been given him by
from Brixey conscripted Jesse in their
“all the citizens are prejudiced aganst me &
County “on a marauding expedition,” it
Dow Ferris and that he had no notion of
turn; for the following day, September
no fare trial will be granted to me.”
accosted Joel Vanzant, who lived on the
its belonging to Brixey. Thereupon, Brixey
2, he “volunteered” and was mustered
53
Calvin Brixey
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
tering out, for he was by then imprisoned
121
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Jonathan explained, “[Calvin] having been
enlistment did not take, however, for he
in the Rebel army, will be executed soon
On September 1, 1864, a troop of
remained with the regiment not quite
if not demanded, being known to the
Confederate cavalry captured Brixey
three months before deserting in the early
party by whom he was captured.” Jonathan
near Decherd. That day, Brixey had
days of John Bell Hood’s Tennessee cam-
declared that his brother was “at the time
appeared at the Hawkerville school-
paign. He was captured by Union forces
[of his capture] Recruiting for the U.S.
house, where he and his comrades
in Gainsboro, Kentucky, on November
Service by authority granted him by Your
“arrested” two young men, riding
20, 1864, and held at Nashville as a pris-
Excellency” and emphasized that Brixey
oner of war.62
had in his possession at the time of his
The declaration that Schoolmaster
capture “a Captains Commission from the
Hindman made the following year was
Secy of War, and was dressed in U.S. uni-
hardly a disinterested recitation. In March
form.”64
away from the schoolhouse in the direction of Decherd. The Confederates
intercepted Brixey and liberated the
young men. (“Hockerville” [Hawkerville] detail from “Vicinity of Dechard,
July 20, 1863,” Official Records At-
1865, with the war drawing to a close, a
At first blush, Jonathan Brixey’s account
group of local citizens, almost certainly
defies belief. How could Brixey, so recently
organized by Jesse’s father, Dr. James J.
imprisoned by Johnson, who had decreed
Abernathy, submitted attestations to the
that Brixey should stand trial on charges
Union provost marshal aimed at winning
that he committed “many cases of murder,
Jesse’s release from the federal prison in
robbery, &c.,” have, at the time of his cap-
These facts permit the assumption that
the supposition that Brixey was recruiting
Nashville. On March 15 and 16, 1865,
ture, been acting under Johnson’s author-
Brixey’s impassioned request for a face-to-
in an official or quasi-official capacity at
ten local citizens and three of Jesse’s for-
ity? Calvin’s brother is hardly an impartial
face interview with General Thomas was
the time of his capture, while Hindman’s
mer classmates gave statements to the pro-
witness, and his story might appear to be
granted. 67 In the end military authorities
description of Brixey’s erratic conduct at
vost marshal confirming Hindman’s story
yet another post hoc rewriting of events.
concluded that commissioning Brixey as a
the Hawkerville schoolhouse accords well
quoted above. All subscribed to the nar-
It is, however, confirmed by a statement
recruiting officer, probably as a means to
with other accounts of his turbulent, cho-
rative of “an orderly, inoffensive & indus-
the War Department provided to the U.S.
distance him from Tennessee, was prefer-
leric temperament. In this view, Brixey was
trious pupil” possessed of the appropriate
Pension Office in 1871 in connection with
able to the expense and distraction of a
on a mission to rehabilitate himself by rais-
Unionist instincts who had been pushed
Martha Brixey’s application for a widow’s
trial. If true, it is a tribute to Brixey’s pow-
ing a new company, and Abernathy was
into the arms of the Confederate military
pension for the loss of her husband during
ers of persuasion. It is also possible that
not one of Brixey’s typical victims, to be
in consequence of his abduction by the
military service. After stating that Brixey
Andrew Johnson, after receiving word of
robbed first and then shot, but a “recruit”
“violent, bloody,” and drunken Brixey.63
had been mustered out of service on June
the Union defeat at the Battle of Kennesaw
forcibly conscripted into Brixey’s new com-
Calvin’s younger brother, Jonathan
16, 1864, and placed “[i]n confinement in
Mountain on June 27, changed his mind
pany.
W. Brixey, gave a very different account
military prison at Nashville Tennessee,” the
about imprisoning an energetic, if erratic,
R.M. Van Noy, who lived outside of
of the events leading to Brixey’s capture.
Adjutant General’s Office continued that
Union cavalry commander, reasoning, per-
Manchester, described Brixey’s capture
On September 27, 1864, three weeks after
“From the records of Nashville Military
haps, that this was no time to be locking
as it was recounted to him at the time.
Brixey’s apprehension, Jonathan addressed
Prison it appears that [Brixey] was con-
up men who could serve the war effort.68
Brixey, accompanied by “Lunt” Conatser
an urgent letter to Andrew Johnson,
fined June 10 , 1864, paroled June 29 ,
Schoolmaster Hindman’s account of
and a man named Henry “stopped near
appealing to the governor to arrange for
1864, to report to Governor Johnson July
Brixey’s abduction of Jesse Abernathy and
Hawkerville. It is said that they were talk-
his brother’s “immediate exchange,” for,
5 , 1864.”
a classmate is hardly incompatible with
ing to some school children. I have also
65
th
th
66
th
las, Plate 035, No.1)
Calvin Brixey
122
into the regiment’s Company B. Jesse’s
123
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
with him for all time to come.”71 And on
by pervasive internecine violence that
equipped and mounted Brixey’s company.
hound puppies,” when Anderson’s troopers
November 8, 1864, the Lancaster Ledger
touched its civilian population at least as
Brixey’s own muster-out notice, which
appeared. “[W]omen came to their gates
(Lancaster, South Carolina) published the
harshly as its military occupiers, Brixey
bore the notation “Never Paid,” showed
as they passed and said that Brixey was
account of “a gentleman recently from
achieved in his short, violent career a noto-
that he had been issued neither cloth-
just ahead, ‘to hurry up.’” Conatser and
Middle Tennessee,” who reported that
riety that endured in the living memory of
ing, nor a weapon, nor a mount, nor any
Henry escaped, but Anderson’s men cor-
Brixey, “the ringleader of a Union band of
Grundy and Coffee counties’ inhabitants
other equipment during his service under
nered Brixey in a fenced barnyard. He tried
bushwhackers in Middle Tennessee,” “was
well into the twentieth century.
Since
Union colors.78 Brixey’s depredations were
to bluff his way out by giving his captors
captured by a portion of the 4th Tennessee
Brixey’s infamy arose almost entirely from
motivated to a not-insignificant degree by
a false name “but he was immediately rec-
cavalry, in Wheeler’s command, and hung
his actions during his brief service with the
the need to provide mounts and equip-
ognized by the members of the regiment...
near Murfreesboro.” The writer sum-
First Alabama & Tennessee Independent
ment for his band in order to maintain its
who knew him well.”69
marized Brixey’ career: “This fellow and
Vidette Cavalry, service that spanned less
operational readiness. In this regard, it is
The Confederates took Brixey into cus-
his band of outlaws were engaged on an
than a year, it is worth pondering what it
instructive to contrast Company D with
tody and, the next morning, brought him
extensive scale in murdering, plundering
was that singularized Brixey in the popu-
its sister company, Company E, which was
to Manchester, where “the public square
and robbing Southern citizens in Middle
lar mind amidst the widespread “ruinous...
also raised in Grundy County. When, on
was full of Confederate soldiers.” Van Noy,
Tennessee; of whom, in specie alone, it is
spoliations of soldiers, slaves, and ban-
January 20, 1864, a band of Confederate
who had come to town that morning,
supposed they had taken several hundred
dits” visited upon the citizens of Middle
raiders under Major Willis Scott Bledsoe
learned that Brixey’s captors had taken him
thousand dollars.”72
Tennessee during the second Union occu-
attacked Tracy City, which Company E
pation.
was assigned to defend, it was discovered
to his mother’s house:
Captain William H. Hampton pro-
74
75
vided the most detailed account of Brixey’s
First, however, two points should be
that “none of [Company E’s members
I was told by others that Capt. Brixey
hanging in a so-called “Officer’s Certificate
made on Brixey’s behalf. While the Union
were] armed—except some half-dozen
was mounted on a mule, bareback, in
of Death” provided in 1872 in support of
command scarcely condoned his outra-
with squirrel rifles—none mounted, and
his shirt sleeves, without shoes or socks,
Martha Brixey’s pension application:
geous conduct and that of his men, the lax
none of the slightest service.”79 Whatever
command structure under which the First
his other defects, Brixey took care that his
and his feet securely tied under the
mule’s belly. His mother, Mrs. Joanna
The Rebels taken Captain Brixey tied
Alabama & Tennessee operated made pos-
force was properly mounted and equipped.
Brixey, his wife and two little daughters
upon a horse near Murfreesborough
sible, even conduced to, that conduct. In
In short, the Federal command must
were weeping; that Capt. Brixey said
and there they hung him by the neck
addition, when it was mustered out of ser-
bear some measure of responsibility for
“Oh, don’t cry. I will be back soon,”
until he was dead and then left him
vice in June 1864, Company D had never
the undisciplined conduct of Brixey and
but his mother wrung her hands and
hanging by the neck forbidding the
been paid (although other companies of
his men. But Brixey’s cynical brutality,
the tears streamed down her cheeks,
Citizens taking him down. He was
the First Alabama & Tennessee had).76 One
his shameless thievery, his brazen insub-
whilst the wife got a pair of socks and
hung on or about the 3rd of September,
semi-contemporaneous reporter, Christine
ordination, and his flagrant disregard for
put them on his naked feet, and in a
1864 and remained there until about
Holcomb, drew a direct causal link
the laws and customs of war far exceeded
short time the soldiers were all gone.70
the 4th of September, 1864.73
between Company D’s lack of pay and its
what was necessary to maintain his band in
brutal methods, writing, “They were never
combat readiness or to carry out his mili-
On September 11, 1864, Lucy Virginia
Into what context, then, does Calvin
paid by the North so they stole [what] they
tary responsibilities. In a period when the
French wrote from McMinnville, “I believe
Brixey fit? How can we situate him in his
ate but the killing was just to keep the
Union force occupying western Middle
it is ‘confirmed’ that Paul Anderson took
time and place? In a moment when the
people scared to do anything.”77 In addi-
Tennessee had begun to wage a campaign
Bricksey the Mt Bushwhacker, and settled
lower Cumberland Plateau was marked
tion, the Union command never properly
of “hard war” not just against guerrillas
Calvin Brixey
124
been told that they were looking at some
125
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
that Paul Anderson took Bricksey the Mt Bushwhacker, and settled with him for all time to come.”
126
(French, from Distinguished Women of the South in Literature, 1866)
no question that his reputation was that
tion, Brixey’s treatment of civilians man-
not only of a hardened murderer but of an
aged to shock even the architects of that
unrestrained marauder and thief.84
more rigorous policy.80 Like “thos bad
In reaching for an understanding of
men of mine,” Brixey was, as he confided
Brixey, it is significant that the two con-
to Rosecrans, “too rough for this country,”
temporaries who reported his death each
better suited to the intemperate savagery of
called Brixey, a commissioned officer of
“the western frontiers” and Bloody Kansas
the Union Army, a “bushwhacker.”85 And
than to “long-settled” Middle Tennessee.81
Brixey himself had loudly proclaimed to
In his ruthless treatment of his victims,
the Union command as proof of his mili-
Brixey resembled his notorious counter-
tary effectiveness in the Union cause not
part in the region, the Confederate guer-
only his suppression of “bushwhackers”
rilla Champ Ferguson. But while the brutal
but also the fact that “I Bushwhacked
methods employed by the two were simi-
Conscript hunters before this armey [the
lar, Ferguson, unlike Brixey, was a vigorous
Army of the Cumberland] advanced [into
belligerent who sought out pitched engage-
Middle Tennessee].86 “Bushwhacker” is
ments with the enemy. Moreover, Ferguson
a profoundly ambiguous term, and it is
demonstrated a dogged allegiance to his
no small irony that both Brixey and his
cause, while Brixey’s most extreme acts,
detractors used the same term to speak
untinged by any visible loyalty to the
of him. In the sense that Brixey used it,
Union, were visited upon Unionist and
“bushwhacker” signifies a “guerilla,” an
secessionist without distinction, the chief
irregular combatant who attacks enemy
grievance taxed against him by the Union
combatants.87 Its other meaning is that of
command.82
a simple brigand, a non-combatant who
Brixey’s rapacity forms a second promi-
preys on non-combatants for non-military
nent element of the bitter memory he left
ends, one who attacks from ambush, “kills
behind. From Widow Powell’s featherbed
for the sake of killing and plunders for the
to Judge Chilcoat’s horses to a handful
sake of gain.”88 It is in this second sense
of dollars intended as payment for a cow,
that Brixey was remembered immediately
Brixey routinely exploited his commis-
following his death, and long thereafter,
sion to “appropriate[] ... [to his] own pri-
by the “citizens” of Middle Tennessee—as
vate use” property and cash “not,” as the
a violent marauder who embodied “the
Pelham petitioners had protested, “in any
chaos that followed in the wake of destruc-
way wanted for the service.”83 While it is
tive armies.”89
difficult to credit the assertion that, “in
Brixey shared his place and moment
specie alone . . . [Brixey’s band] had taken
with many other equally hardened but less
several hundred thousand dollars,” there is
well-remembered perpetrators of violence
Calvin Brixey
On September 11, 1864, Lucy Virginia French wrote from McMinnville, “I believe it is ‘confirmed’
but also against the local civilian popula-
127
against a local civilian populace. One of
many such was General Robert Milroy,
the Union commander with responsibility for maintaining order along the route
of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad
between Nashville and Bridgeport, the
same area in which Company D operated.90 But if Milroy, and others like him,
systematized the violation of the laws of
war in their mistreatment of the secessionist civilian population of Middle Tennessee,
Brixey, ostensibly a defender of the Union
cause, with his arbitrary, malignant attacks
on individual civilians both Unionist and
secessionist, randomized and personalized
128
emblematic of it. This it was that caused
his unsavory memory to live on beyond
that of his contemporaries, earning him his
dubious place in the lore of the southern
Cumberland Plateau.
1. See, for example, Daniel E., Sutherland,
“Introduction: The Desperate Side of War,” in
Daniel E. Sutherland, ed., Guerrillas, Unionists, and
Violence on the Confederate Home Front (Fayetteville:
University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 12. Useful
accounts of this internal Civil War as it was waged in
occupied Middle Tennessee may be found in Aaron
Astor, The Civil War along Tennessee’s Cumberland
Plateau (Charleston: The History Press, 2015),
111-133; James Alex Baggett, Homegrown Yankees:
Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War (Baton
Rouge: LSU Press, 2009); Daniel E., Sutherland,
A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in
the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2009); Robert A. Mackey, The
Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South,
1861-1865 (Norman: University of Oklahoma
The Papers of Andrew Johnson (Knoxville, University
of Tennessee Press, 1983), 6: 391, n.3. Two websites give accounts of Brixey and the First Alabama
& Tennessee, but neither contains any scholarly
apparatus: Jim Brown, “16th Tennessee Volunteer
Infantry Regiment, The Regiment’s Black Sheep,
‘Captain, USA’ Private (John?) Calvin (L.) Brixey,
C.S.A., C Company,” available at http://home.
freeuk.net/gazkhan/tenn_black-sheep.htm, accessed
March 4, 2019; “First Alabama and Tennessee
Independent Vidette Cavalry,” http://www.angelfire.
com/al2/1sttnalvidcav/calvinbrixey.htm, accessed
March 4, 2019. See also Johnny L.T.N. Potter, First
Tennessee & Alabama Independent Vidette Cavalry
Roster, 1863-1864: Companies A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H
(Chattanooga: Mountain Press, 1995).
4. Notes from the files of the Grundy County
Historical Society, apparently prepared by Dale
Miller, kindly provided to the author by the society’s then-president, Ralph Thompson; Bridgewater,
“Bushwhackers in Coffee, Warren, and Grundy
Counties,” 19.
5. Coffee County Historical Quarterly 20, no. 1-2
(June 1990): 16.
6. “John O. Brixey, 3rd Tennessee Infantry,”
NARA, Compiled Service Records of Volunteer
Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War
in Organizations from the State of Tennessee,
RG94, M368, National Archives and Records
Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA) available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272085303 (accessible with Fold3 membership, October 8, 2019); “Joanna Brixey, Mexican
War Pension No. 273,” in Coffee County Historical
Quarterly 20, no. 1-2 (June 1990): 17.
7. “Calvin Brixey,” Population Schedules of the
Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Tennessee,
RG29, M653 (Manchester, Coffee County), NARA;
“Joanna Brixey, Mexican War Pension No. 273,” 18;
Bridgewater, “Bushwhackers in Coffee, Warren, and
Grundy Counties,” 19.
8. “Calvin Brixey,” 1860 Census; Bridgewater,
“Bushwhackers in Coffee, Warren, and Grundy
Counties,” 20.
9. “Brixey, Calvin, Co. G, 16 Tennessee Inf.,”
Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who
Served in Organizations from the State of Tennessee,
RG109, M268 (hereafter CSRT), NARA, beginning at https://www.fold3.com/image/73411692
(“Calvin Brixey CSRT”). His records list him in
Companies D and F. His younger brother, William
Thomas Brixey, served in the regiment’s Company
B until he was discharged “for disability” on August
11, 1861. “Brixey, William T., Co. F, 16 Tennessee
Inf.,” CSRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/73411802. The Sixteenth Tennessee, sometimes known as the Mountain Regiment or the
First Mountain Regiment, was raised primarily in
Warren, White, Coffee, DeKalb, and Grundy counties. Another brother, Jonathan Wooten Brixey,
joined the Thirty-fifth Tennessee Infantry (C.S.A.),
also known as the Fifth Tennessee Regiment,
Provisional Army, enlisting on September 6, 1861, at
McMinnville. “Brixey, John W., Co. G, 35 Tennessee
Inf.,” CSRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/76839446.
10. “Joanna Brixey, Mexican War Pension No.
273,” 18.
11. Affidavit of Martha E. Brixey in support of
pension application, September 24, 1879, in “Martha
E. Brixey (Calvin L. Brixey), No. 198.987/331.277,”
NARA, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications
of Widows and Other Veterans of the Army and Navy
Who Served Mainly in the Civil War and the War with
Spain, compiled 1861 - 1934, RG05 (“Calvin Brixey
Pension File”). Calvin Brixey CSRT; see https://www.
fold3.com/image/73411780.
12. On July 18, 1863, the Sixteenth Tennessee,
counting its effectives following the ill-starred
Tullahoma Campaign, belatedly posted Brixey
as “deserted from Corinth, now bushwhacking in
Middle Tennessee.” Calvin Brixey CSRT; see https://
www.fold3.com/image/73411753. “Christine”
[apparently Edna Christine Elliott Holcomb, b.
1921] at Hixon, Tenn., to Iva Miller Davis, transcription of undated letter found in files of Grundy
County Historical Society, apparently provided by
Dale Miller (“Holcomb letter”). According to the let-
Calvin Brixey
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
such violence and, in so doing, became
Press, 2004); Michael R. Bradley, With Blood and
Fire: Life Behind Union Lines in Middle Tennessee,
1863-65 (Shippensburg: Burd Street Press, 2003);
B. Franklin Cooling, “A People’s War: Partisan
Conflict in Tennessee and Kentucky,” in Sutherland,
Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate
Home Front, 113-32; Stephen V. Ash, When the
Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied
South, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995); Stephen V. Ash, Middle
Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860-1870: War and
Peace in the Upper South (1988, 2nd ed. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 2006); Stephen V.
Ash, “Sharks in an Angry Sea: Civilian Resistance
and Guerilla Warfare in Occupied Middle Tennessee,
1862-1865,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 45, no. 3
(1986): 217-229.
2. Jim Nicholson, “Cal Brixey, Most Infamous
Bushwhacker,” Grundy County Herald (Tracy City,
Tenn., September 2, 1976, 17-A.
3. Betty Anderson Bridgewater, “Bushwhackers
in Coffee, Warren, and Grundy Counties in 1863-65;
in particular, Calvin Brixey,” Coffee County Historical
Quarterly 20, no. 1-2 (June 1990): 19. Discussions
of Brixey can be found in Michael Oliver, The Civil
War in Grundy County and Southern Middle Tennessee
([np], 2018); Astor, The Civil War along Tennessee’s
Cumberland Plateau, 132; “Calvin L Brixey,” in
Coffee Chronicle: Civil War Soldiers of Coffee County,
Tennessee (Book 1, Surnames A-B) (Manchester.:
Coffee County Historical Society, Nov. 2012), I,
no. 2, 233-34; Shirley Farris Jones, “Boogers and
Bushwhackers,” Coffee Chronicle: Civil War Soldiers
of Coffee County, Tennessee (Book 4, Surnames K-Mc),
I, no. 2, 230; Baggett, Homegrown Yankees, 108;
Sutherland, A Savage Conflict, 230-31; Bradley,
With Blood and Fire, 36-38, 111-113; Charles
Rice, Hard Times: The Civil War in Huntsville and
North Alabama, 1861-1865 (Boaz: Boaz Printing
Inc., 1994), 246-50; Jerry Blevins, Sequatchie Valley
Soldiers in the Civil War: Bledsoe, Grundy, Marion
and Sequatchie Counties in Tennessee and Jackson
County in Alabama (Huntsville: The author, 1990),
64-65; LeRoy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins, eds.,
129
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and Officers from Tennessee in both the Confederate
and Union Armies; General and Staff Officers of the
Provisional Army of Tennessee, Appointed by Governor
Isham G. Harris (Williamsbridge, New York City:
Ambrose Lee Pub. Co., [1908]), 164. Richard Nelson
Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the
Confederacy (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1992), 55-56.
23. Sutherland, Guerrillas, Unionists, and violence on the Confederate Home Front, 8; Storey,
Margaret M. Storey, Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s
Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), 2004,
104. Unlike the many Unionists who had left East
Tennessee and Northern Alabama in 1861 and 1862,
often at considerable peril, to enlist in Union regiments, the recruits to the First Alabama & Tennessee
waited for the Union Army to come to them.
Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 29-60; Storey, 102. In
his careful taxonomy of irregular military warfare,
Robert Mackey distinguishes between antiguerrilla,
counterguerrilla, and counterinsurgency operations.
Mackey, The Uncivil War, 13-14. In Mackey’s system, antiguerrilla operations are aimed at “destroying
the irregulars themselves... [rather than] separating
the irregular from the populace” and are often conducted “without regard for the impact on the civilian
populace.”
24. Wright, Tennessee in the War, 164; Baggett,
Homegrown Yankees, 107, 109; Storey, Loyalty and
Loss, 104.
25. Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/272/260923092.
26. James L. Nicholson, Grundy County
(Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1982),
47; Brown, “The Regiment’s Black Sheep.”
27. Letter dated January 31, 1864, from “C.
Brixey, Capt. Comdg., 1st Indpt. Co. Tenn. Cav.,”
Tullahoma, to Capt. D.I. Swain, Army Adjutant
General, Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/272/260923118.
28. Petition of citizens of Pelham, Tennessee,
to Gen. G. D. Wagner (September 1, 1863), Union
Provost Marshals’ File of Papers Relating to Two or More
Civilians, M416, NARA [hereafter UPM (Two or
more)], roll 23, IV 376-377. One story recounts
Brixey’s men ransacking a woman’s house, carrying
off all of her household goods. Janice Burnett White,
“Brixyites,” in The Heritage of Grundy County, TN
([np]: Walsworth Pub. Co., 2004), 7.
29. “A.S. Goodman,” 1860 Census (Grundy
County); “Goodman, Anderson, Co. G, 34 Tennessee
Inf.,” CSRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/76979213; “A Mother’s Devotion,” in Edwin
L. Drake, The Annals of the Army of Tennessee and
Early Western History, including a chronological summary of the battles and engagements of the western
armies of the Confederacy (Nashville: A.D. Haynes,
1878), 1: 36-38.
30. W.S. Rosecrans, “Report of The Operations
of the Army of the Cumberland – The Occupation of
Middle Tennessee, and Passage over the Cumberland
Mountains, Headquarters of the Army of the
Cumberland, October 12, 1863,” in John Fitch,
Annals of the Army of the Cumberland: Comprising
Biographies, Descriptions of Departments, Accounts
of Expeditions, Skirmishes, and Battles, 3rd ed.
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864), 706.
31. Letter of August 20, 1863, from Colonel
Caleb Carlton, commanding the Eighty-ninth Ohio
Volunteer Infantry, which had garrisoned Tracy City
during August, to his wife, Library of Congress,
Manuscript Division, The Papers of Caleb H. Carlton,
Container 1, Family Correspondence, 1853-1876.
32. James Winton, Jr., Claim No. 17729
(Grundy County, Tennessee), Southern Claims
Commission Disapproved and Barred Claims, RG233,
M1407, NARA, [hereafter SCC (Disapproved)],
available at https://www.fold3.com/image/647624;
Thomas Wooten, Claim No. 14571 (Grundy
County, Tennessee), SCC (Disapproved), available at
http://www.fold3.com/image/34/258647235; James
P. Summers, Claim No. 18151 (Grundy County,
Tennessee), SCC (Disapproved), available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/563020; Michael Glaleher
[Gallagher], Claim No. 17286 (Grundy County,
Tennessee), Southern Claims Commission Approved
Claims, 1871-1880, RG217 NARA, [hereafter
SCC (Approved)], available at https://www.fold3.
com/image/34/258649884; George W. Payne,
Claim No. 14565 (Grundy County, Tennessee), SCC
(Disapproved), available at http://www.fold3.com/
image/27/2373381.
33. Brixey to Swain, January 31, 1864, Compiled
Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served
in Organizations from the State of Tennessee, RG04,
M395, NARA (hereafter Calvin Brixey USRT).
34. Baggett, Homegrown Yankees, 145; United
States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A
Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies. [Hereafter OR.] (Washington:
1880-1901) ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 1, 55 (Report of Col.
John M. Hughs, Twenty-fifth Tennessee Infantry,
Dalton, Ga., April 28, 1864) (“On the 22d of
February we met a party of ‘picked men’ from the
Fifth Tennessee (Yankee) Cavalry, under Captain
Exum. This party had refused to treat us as prisoners
of war, and had murdered several of our men whom
they had caught straggling from their command...”)
Jim Nicholson, “New Light on Skirmish Here (Tracy
City, Tenn.),” available at https://static1.squarespace.
com/static/59c69c542278e73c826f3226/t/59e414c
0d74cff9b80f7c770/1508119744618/Transcription
+of+Nicholson%27s+Articles.pdf.
35. Oral account of Thomas Guinn Powell, the
six-year-old son, and diary entries of Mrs. Margaret
Gwyn, recounted in Bridgewater, “Bushwhackers in
Coffee, Warren, and Grundy Counties,” 22.
36. R.M. Van Noy, “Bloody Deed Done by
Federal Soldiers,” Nashville Tennessean, July 16, 1907,
26 (in section of Sunday paper titled “The Nashville
American”); R.M. Van Noy, “Career of Capt. Calvin
Brixey,” Nashville Tennessean, December 22, 1907,
26.
37. Edwards to Johnson, September 30, 1863,
in Graf and Haskins, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 6:
390-91.
38. OR, ser. 1, vol. 31, pt. 2, 92; Thomas B. Van
Horne, History of the Army of the Cumberland. Its
Organizations, Campaigns, and Battles, written at the
Request of Major-General George H. Thomas Chiefly
from His Private Military Journal and Official and
Calvin Brixey
130
ter, Christine was the great-granddaughter of Walton
Brixey, Sr., Calvin Brixey’s uncle.
13. Ash, When the Yankees Came, 99-107.
14. Memphis Daily Appeal (published in
Atlanta), July 18, 1863, p. 2, col. 6.
15. Lucy Virginia French Diaries, 1862-1865,
Tennessee State Library and Archives, Microfilm
1816 (“Lucy French Journal”) (entry for July 20,
1863).
16, Isabel Howell, John Armfield of Beersheba
Springs (Beersheba Springs: Beersheba Springs
Historical Society, 2011) (reprinting original monograph from Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 1943 and
1944), 75.
17. Lucy French Journal (entry for August 16,
1863).
18. “Brixey, Calvin, Co. D, 1 Tennessee
Independent Vidette Cavalry,” USRT (“Calvin Brixey
USRT”), beginning at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923089.
19. Holcomb letter. According to the Holcomb
letter, the Union army hired Brixey and other
Confederate deserters to exact revenge for the killing
of a Union officer at Altamont. This would appear
to be a mistaken reference to the killing of Captain
Stephen P. Tipton of the First Alabama & Tennessee
Independent Vidette Cavalry, Company E, at
Altamont on January 20, 1864, by Confederate cavalry, an event that occurred six months after Brixey
joined the same regiment.
20. Blevins, Sequatchie Valley Soldiers, 18.
21. Ash, When the Yankees Came, 130.
22. Richard M. Edwards, Chattanooga, Tenn.,
to Gov. A. Johnson, Sept. 30, 1863, in Graf and
Haskins, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 6: 390. Edwards,
who sought to be restored to the command of the
Fourth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.A.), represented to
Johnson that the effort to recruit men for three-year
terms of military service was being “greatly retarded”
by rumors that Johnson intended to authorize the
raising of twelve-month troops “for state defense”
and “home guards.” Baggett, Homegrown Yankees,
107-08; Marcus Joseph Wright, Tennessee in the
War, 1861-1865; Lists of Military Organizations
131
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
With the 3rd Wisconsin Badgers: The Living Experience
of the Civil War through the Journals of Van R. Willard,
Steven S. Raab, ed. (Mechanicsville: Stackpole
Books, 1999), 238. Where Willard and Hinkley differ on details, I have followed Willard, who wrote his
account sometime after leaving the service on July 1,
1864, and the re-election of Lincoln in November
of that year, while Hinkley’s was composed nearly
half a century after the fact. A third version of these
events is given in [S.A. Cunningham], “Fate of Judge
James R. Chilcoat,” Confederate Veteran 21 (1913),
115. I have not included any divergent details from
the Cunningham version, which is not a first-person
narrative.
48. Hinkley, 114; Willard, 244. Before the war,
James R. Chilcoat/Chilcote/Chillcoth had been an
attorney in Fayetteville. In November 1861 at the
age of 44, he enlisted as a private in the Forty-first
Tennessee Infantry (C.S.A.). “Chilcoat, James R.,
Co. C, 41 Tennessee Inf.,” CSRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/271/77969929. After three
months of service, he was appointed a regimental
musician, perhaps in deference to his age. Ibid., available at https://www.fold3.com/image/77969949.
The Forty-first Tennessee surrendered at Fort
Donelson on February 16, 1862, and those captured,
including Chilcoat, were interned at Camp Morton,
Indiana, until they were exchanged at Vicksburg,
Mississippi, in September. Chilcoat, who was suffering from a fistula, was paid off and discharged from
military service in October. Ibid., available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/77970000.
49. Hinkley, 114-15; Willard, 245.
50. Telegram dated May 1, 1864, from
Wm. D. Whipple, Assist. Adjutant General, at
Chattanooga, to Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, Calvin
Brixey USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923139. For Hampton, see notes 75
and 80 below.
51. Letter dated June 9, 1864, from Andrew
Johnson, Executive Department, Nashville, to Gen.
Rousseau, Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/272/260923163.
52. Wright, Tennessee in the war, 164; Civil War
Centennial Commission, Tennesseans in the Civil War:
A Military History of Union and Confederate Units
with Available Rosters of Personnel (Nashville: Civil
War Centennial Commission, 2 vols., 1964-1965),
1: 317.
53. Letter dated June 23, 1864, from Calvin
Brixey, Capt., at the “Millitary Prison, Nashvill,
Tenn.,” to Maj. Gen. Thomas, Calvin Brixey
USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923135.
54. Order dated June 28, 1864, over the signature of Brig. Genl. Andrew Johnson, Military
Governor of Tennessee, to the Adjutant General’s
Office, Nashville, Calvin Brixey USRT, available at
https://www.fold3.com/image/272/260923131.
55. Reply of U.S. Adjutant General’s Office,
dated December 7, 1871, to request from Pension
Office for information on Brixey’s military service and death, Calvin Brixey Pension File (Brixey
was “confined June 10th, 1864, paroled June 29th,
1864”).
56. Letter dated July 21, 1864, from “C. Brixey,
Capt. Co. D, 1st Indpt. Vidette Cavl.,” Decherd, to
Maj. Gen. Rosecrans, Calvin Brixey USRT, available
at https://www.fold3.com/image/272/260923127.
57. “Retrospection” by “Felix,” probably Felix
Waggoner Motlow (1838-1917), a veteran of
Company E, First Tennessee Regiment (C.S.A.),
found among old papers belonging to relatives of
the Vanzant family, quoted in Jerry T. Limbaugh,
“The Murder of Eli Tripp (1807-1864) on Farris
Creek,” Historical Tidings (Winchester: Franklin
County Historical Society) 46, no. 4 (October
2014), 4.
58. Lieutenant Colonel Paul F. Anderson commanded the Fourth (Smith’s) Tennessee Cavalry
(C.S.A.), also designated the Eighth Tennessee
Cavalry (C.S.A.), succeeding its first commander,
Colonel Baxter Smith, who was captured May 9,
1863, while on patrol on the Caney Fork River.
Anderson commanded the regiment, which was
raised in the McMinnville area, for the remainder of
the war.
59. Martin Phipps’s presence at the Hawkerville
schoolhouse is reported in William H. Hampton,
late 1st Lieutenant commanding, Co. M, 10th
Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry (U.S.A.), “Officer’s
Certificate of Death,” Altamont, Tennessee, March
30, 1872, Calvin Brixey Pension File.
60. This portion at least of Brixey’s reported outburst would appear to be an invented afterthought,
dictated by subsequent events.
61. Statement of Jno P. Hindman, Hawkerville,
Franklin County, Tennessee, March 15, 1865, Union
Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual
Citizens, RG109, M345, NARA [hereafter UPM
(Individuals)], available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/249/286995599.
62. “Abernathy, Jesse N., Co. B, 4 Tennessee
Cavalry (Confederate),” CSRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/20/67260525.
63. D.S. Long, et al., Attestation regarding
Abduction of Jesse M. Abernathy by local citizens,
March 15, 1865, UPM (Individuals), available at
https://www.fold3.com/image/249/286995602;
John L.W. Bennett, et al., Attestation regarding
Abduction of Jesse M. Abernathy by classmates,
March 16, 1865, UPM (Individuals), available at
https://www.fold3.com/image/249/280110797.
64. Letter dated September 27, 1864, from
J[onathan]. W. Brixey, “brother to Capt Brixey,”
Nashville, to Andrew Johnson, Military Governor
of Tennessee, Library of Congress, Andrew Johnson
Papers, Series 1, Microfilm Reel 11.
65. Calvin Brixey Pension File.
66. Second request for Brixey’s military records,
dated November 14, 1871, from Commissioner,
Pension Office, to U.S. Adjutant General, and reply
dated December 7, 1871. Calvin Brixey Pension File
(emphasis supplied).
67. Presumably, in his interview with Thomas,
Brixey would have made the proposal that he renewed
in his July 21, 1864, letter to General Rosecrans – to
raise a company of men for service on the “western
frontiers.”
68. It has been asserted that Brixey’s release
was due to the fact that “no witnesses had appeared
Calvin Brixey
132
Other Documents Furnished by Him (Cincinnati: R
Clarke & Co., 1875), 2: 6-7; Blevins, Sequatchie
Valley Soldiers, 18.
39. OR, ser. 1, vol. 31, pt. 1, 602.
40. Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://
www.fold3.com/image/272/260923092; Petition of
citizens of Pelham, Tennessee (September 1, 1863)
(“the company recently organized under Capt
Bricksy...”).
41. Letter dated January 17, 1864, from Col.
Samuel Ross, 20th Connecticut Volunteers, at
Decherd, to an unspecified recipient but referred upon
receipt to Maj. Gen. Slocum, commdg. 12th Army
Corps, Tullahoma, Calvin Brixey USRT, available at
https://www.fold3.com/image/272/260923148.
42. Letter dated January 6, 1864, from Col.
Jas. L. Selfridge, 46th Pennsylvania Volunteers, at
Decherd to Gen. W.D. Whipple, Assist. Adjutant
General, Army of the Cumberland, Calvin Brixey
USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923145.
43. Ross letter of January 17, 1864; Letter
dated January 11, 1864, from Col. Jas. L. Selfridge,
46th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Commanding Post,
Decherd, to Gen. W.D. Whipple, Assist. Adjutant
General, Army of the Cumberland, Calvin Brixey
USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923156.
44. Ross letter of January 17, 1864.
45. Letter dated January 22, 1864, from Col.
Jas. L. Selfridge, 46th Pennsylvania Volunteers,
Commanding Post, Decherd, to Gen. W.D. Whipple,
Assist. Adjutant General, Army of the Cumberland,
Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://www.fold3.
com/image/272/260923150.
46. Brixey to Swain, January 31, 1864. Brixey’s
muster-out roll confirms his statement that he was
never paid during his service with the Union army.
Calvin Brixey USRT, available at https://www.fold3.
com/image/272/260923104.
47. Julian Wisner Hinkley, A Narrative of Service
with the Third Wisconsin Infantry, Wisconsin History
Commission, Original Papers No. 7 ([Madison]:
Democrat Printing Co., 1912), 114-15; Willard,
133
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
(Coffee County), [S]6524” Tennessee, Confederate
Pension Applications, Soldiers and Widows, 18911965, FamilySearch, available at https://www.
familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9GYDJGB?i=560&wc=M6ZX-XTL%3A171467301%
2C173087401&cc=1874474. And in September
1907, shortly before publishing his reminiscence
of Calvin Brixey, Van Noy wrote to the Pension
Office in support of Jonathan Brixey’s widow’s pension application. “Helon M. Brixey (J.M. Brixey),
Coffee County, 1179,” Tennessee, Confederate
Pension Applications, Soldiers and Widows, 18911965, FamilySearch, available at https://www.
familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GGY9BMF?i=156&wc=M6Z6-D2S%3A171467101%2C
171575201&cc=1874474.
70. Van Noy, “Career of Capt. Calvin Brixey.”
71. Lucy French Journal (entry for September
11, 1864).
72. “Army Intelligence,” Lancaster Ledger
(Lancaster, S.C.), Nov. 8, 1864, 2, col. 3, available at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/
sn84026900/1864-11-08/ed-1/seq-2/.
73. William H. Hampton, Officer’s Certificate
of Death, Calvin Brixey Pension File. Hampton
signed the certificate as “late 1st lieutenant commanding Co. M, 10th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry,”
a Union regiment. The form that Hampton provided, suitably modified, was an “officer’s certificate
of disability” intended for use by the superior officer
of an applicant under his command for a disability
pension, despite the fact that Hampton was never
Brixey’s commanding officer. Reportedly, Hampton
and Brixey were both part of the band of bushwhackers that looted Beersheba Springs. Howell, “John
Armfield of Beersheba Springs,” 75. Van Noy put
the place of Calvin Brixey’s hanging “[a]bout fifteen
or twenty miles from Manchester, on the road to
Murfreesboro, near a place called the Big Springs.”
Van Noy, “Career of Capt. Calvin Brixey.” See also
Declaration for Widow’s Pension and Increase,
September 4, 1871, Calvin Brixey Pension File
(placing Brixey’s death at “Big Spring”). Brixey’s
gang continued to operate in Grundy County at
least through the end of 1864, “killing and burning” and hanging as “bushwhackers” Confederate
soldiers who, separated from their units, returned
home in the aftermath of John Bell Hood’s disastrous raid into Middle Tennessee. See “Farris, J.K.
(Coffee County), No. 8345,” Tennessee, Confederate
Pension Applications, Soldiers and Widows, 18911965, FamilySearch, beginning at https://www.
familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9GY6S452?i=1676&cc=1874474.
74. In 1976, Mrs. Alma Parmley Shook (19051988) of Tracy City would recall, “My father hated
[the Brixeyites] worse than anything. The old settlers talked about Brixeyites all the time – carpetbaggers, scalawags, and Brixeyites.” Jim Nicholson, “Cal
Brixey, Most Infamous Bushwhacker.” Hers was a
third-generation memory. Alma Shook’s father, Giles
William Parmley, was not born until 1872 and only
learned of the Brixeyites from members of his parents’
generation. In 2018, Michael Oliver recalled that
when he was ten years old his grandmother would
discipline him for his unruly behavior by telling him
that Brixey “would get me.” Oliver, The Civil War
in Grundy County and Southern Middle Tennessee,
author’s note, [4]. Other local recollections of Brixey
and his band are collected in White, “Brixyites.”
75. The phrase is that of Stephen Ash, Middle
Tennessee Society Transformed, 88.
76. See, for example, the muster-out record
of Granville Todd, Company F, showing that
he was paid through Feb. 29, 1864. “Granville
Todd,” USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/21/259984071.
77. Holcomb letter; see also Van Noy, “Career
of Capt. Calvin Brixey” (“In those days there was a
great scarcity of employment in this section and men
joined the Federal Home Guard as the only way of
earning a living for themselves and family.”).
78. Muster-out Roll (June 16, 1864), Calvin
Brixey USRT, available at https://www.fold3.com/
image/272/260923104.
79. OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 1, 99 (Report of Col.
Samuel Ross, 20th Connecticut Infantry, Decherd,
Tenn. January 23, 1864).
80. Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War:
Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians,
1861-1865 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 98-105.
81. Letter dated July 21, 1864, from C. Brixey
to Maj. Genl. Rosecrans, Calvin Brixey USRT; Ash,
Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 164.
82. Brian D. McKnight, “‘Time by the forelock’: Champ Ferguson and the Borderland Style of
Warfare,” in Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and
W. Calvin Dickinson, Sister States, Enemy States:The
Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee (Lexington.:
University Press of Kentucky, 2009), 140-167.
83. Petition of citizens of Pelham, September 1,
1863.
84. “Army Intelligence,” Lancaster Ledger
(Lancaster, S.C.), Nov. 8, 1864.
85. See text accompanying notes 71 and 72
above. See also text quoted at note 35 above, in
which the Brixeyites who proclaim that they have
killed a “bushwhacker” are themselves described as
“bushwhackers” by a member of the victim’s family.
86. Letter dated June 23, 1864, from Brixey to
Maj. Gen. Thomas.
87. For example, Terry L. Jones, Historical
Dictionary of the Civil War (Lanham: Scarecrow
Press, 2002), I: 239; Mark Mayo Boatner, The Civil
War Dictionary (New York: David McKay Co.,
1959), 109.
88. Charles Leib, Nine Months in the
Quartermaster’s Department (Cincinnati: Moore,
Wilstach, Keys & Co., 1862), quoted in Mackey,
The Uncivil War, 9. See also Sutherland, Savage
Conflict, ix (“Bushwhackers were, strictly speaking, lone gunmen who ‘whacked’ their foes from
the ‘bush.’ However, the name also became a pejorative term for anyone who apparently killed people or destroyed property for sport, out of meanness, or in a personal vendetta.”).
89. Mackey, The Uncivil War, 8.
90. On Milroy’s draconian rule in Middle
Tennessee, see Bradley, With Blood and Fire.
Calvin Brixey
134
against him... [because] Brixey’s men had threatened
to kill anyone who stepped forward, and the provost
[marshal] at Tullahoma had refused to grant passes to
any potential witness to travel to Nashville.” “Calvin
L Brixey,” in Coffee Chronicle: Civil War Soldiers of
Coffee County, Tennessee, 233. Witness intimidation is
scarcely an implausible explanation for the inability
of the authorities to prosecute the leader of a gang of
criminals. For example, William H. Hampton, who,
like Brixey, was a Confederate deserter, a Beersheba
Springs bushwhacker, and the leader of a rogue company of Union militia, was arrested by the military
authorities, accused of being “nothing more than [a]
robber and Guerrilla,” and on July 5, 1864, referred
to the Judge Advocate of the Provost Marshal’s office
in Nashville for prosecution. Nearly three months
later, on September 27, the Judge Advocate recommended that Hampton and his accomplices be
released because no witnesses could be procured
to support a prosecution. “William H. Hampton,”
Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to
Individual Citizens, NARA, RG109, M345, available at https://www.fold3.com/image/286675971.
However, it is unlikely that witness intimidation –
or witness interference – was responsible for Brixey’s
release, which occurred only one day after Andrew
Johnson decreed that “the best manner of controlling
Capt. Brixie is to keep him in prison until he can
be brought to trial, which will be done so soon as
the necessary evidence can be collected.” Order dated
June 28, 1864, over the signature of Brig. Genl.
Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee,
to the Adjutant General’s Office, Nashville, Calvin
Brixey USRT; Reply of U.S. Adjutant General’s
Office, dated December 7, 1871, to request from
Pension Office for information on Brixey’s military
service and death, Calvin Brixey Pension File.
69. Van Noy, “Career of Capt. Calvin Brixey.”
Van Noy had a number of connections to Brixey. He
claimed to have lived outside of Viola in 1863 and
1864 and to have encountered Brixey’s band once.
Ibid. In 1904, Van Noy assisted Calvin’s younger
brother, William, in preparing an application for a
Confederate soldier’s pension. “William T. Brixey
135
Book Reviews
Contributors
194
Elizabeth Gritter is associate professor of history at Indiana University Southeast in New
Albany, Indiana. She is the author of River of Hope: Black Politics and the Memphis Freedom
Movement, 1865–1954 (University Press of Kentucky, 2014). She recently wrote a chapter on
black Memphians and the John F. Kennedy campaign and administration for An Unseen Light:
Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee (University Press of Kentucky, 2018).
Earnestine Jenkins is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art at the University of
Memphis, specializing in American-African American- and African Diaspora visual culture studies. She is particularly interested in historic photographic representations of peoples of African
descent; early 20th century black artists; and 19th century Ethiopian manuscript illumination
and it relation to politics and representation in the Horn of Africa.
Greenburg, Lady First: The World of First
ters, journals, and such—presents a great
Lady Sarah Polk.
challenge to the biographer. And Tennessee’s
By Ann Toplovich................................... 195
First Ladies (Rachel Donelson Jackson,
Gallagher and Gallman, eds., Civil War
Sarah Childress Polk, and Eliza McArdle
Places: Seeing the Conflict through the Eyes of
Johnson) left little first-hand record of their
its Leading Historians.
experiences, thoughts, and motivations to
By Jennifer M. Murray........................... 197
help historians.
Reidy, Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit
Amy Greenburg in her biography of
of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of
Sarah Polk has solved this dilemma in part
Slavery.
by collecting everything she could find of
By Andrew L. Slap.................................. 199
what other people had to say to and about
Young, Robert R. Church Jr. and the African
Polk. The result is an engaging study of one
American Political Struggle.
of Tennessee’s most politically influential
By G. Graham Perry III.......................... 201
women. Greenburg presents a compelling
Baxter. The Secret History of RDX: The Super-
argument that by “perfect[ing] the ability
Explosive that Helped Win World War II.
to hide her power in plain sight under the
By Samuel S. Richardson........................ 202
mantle of female deference” to the powerful
Newman. Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic
white men around her, Sarah Polk was able
Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-
to obscure and exert her own political power.
1992.
(p. xv)
By Elizabeth Gritter................................ 204
Born into a prominent slave-holding
family in 1803, Polk benefited from an
Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk.
exceptional education for a woman of her
By Amy S. Greenburg. (New York: Alfred A.
time, including a stint at the prestigious
Knopf, 2019. Pp. xxiii + 369. Illustrations,
Salem Female Academy in North Carolina,
notes, bibliography, index. $30, cloth.)
and from an affectionate relationship with
her father, Joel Childress, “who allowed her
Working in the absence of primary
access to his political and business world.”
documents authored by one’s subject—let-
(p. 21) Although Childress’s untimely
Book Reviews
THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Merritt R. Blakeslee received his B.A. from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee
and his Ph.D. in Medieval French Literature from Tulane University. For a number of years,
he served as the French medievalist on the graduate faculty of the University of Georgia. In
1991, he received a J.D. degree from the university’s Georgia’s School of Law and moved to
Washington, D.C. to practice international trade and intellectual property law. He continues
to practice law, although he now does so from his home on the coast of Maine. The present
article grew out of his research for a forthcoming book titled “‘Upon the Brink of the Precipice’:
Sewanee and the Lower Cumberland Plateau during the Civil War.”
195