The American Civil War began with a spirit of romance and enthusiasm in the South, but by the end of the war entire families had been swept into the grinding conflict. The family of John Hardie of Thornhill farm in Talladega county, Alabama, was no exception; six Hardie brothers and a brother-in-law fought for the Confederacy, and they compiled remarkable records, even for that remarkable war. William T. Hardie fired the first cannon in the first battle of the war after the fall of Fort Sumter; a cavalryman shot and killed by Alva Hardie was the last Union casualty of the war. In almost every major battle there was at least one of these Hardie brothers in the fight: first and second Manassas, Shiloh, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Murfreesboro, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, the siege of Petersburg, the siege of Vicksburg, the campaign for Atlanta, the March to the Sea, and countless other battles and skirmishes. Some were wounded and some were captured; yet, they all survived.

The story of the six Hardie brothers and their sister's husband begins with John Hardie, an immigrant from Scotland who built a great farm, called Thornhill, in Talladega county, Alabama, and raised his children there until his death in 1848. His life is described in Lillian Galt Martin's book, John Hardie of Thornhill and his Family (1988).

John Hardie arrived in New York in July 1817 and almost immediately moved on to Richmond. In September 1818 he moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he worked in a store, and in early 1820 he moved to Whitesburg, Alabama, on the Tennessee river where he owned a store. On November 27, 1828, he married sixteen year-old Mary Mead Hall in Huntsville, and their first three children were born in Whitesburg: John Timmons on November 29, 1829; James White on May 19, 1831, and Joseph on June 26, 1833.

In 1835 John Hardie moved to Talladega County, Alabama, where he built Thornhill farm. It was here that the rest of his children were born: Mary Isabella on November 5, 1835; Robert Alexander on February 7, 1838; William Tipton on December 9, 1840; Alva Finley on May 10, 1844; and Ann Eliza on July 6, 1846. Their last child, Thomas Chalmers, was born on January 19, 1849, after John Hardie's death.

When John Hardie died at age fifty-two on August 17, 1848, he left seven sons and two daughters to be brought up by his 36-year-old widow. Their childhood cannot have been too hard, even after his death; he left a prosperous store and a large farm with more than 35 slaves to operate it. Indeed, but for the death of their father, it would have been an idyllic childhood for the period. The children learned business in the family store, and they learned farming, especially raising and training horses, at Thornhill. By the time the war began many of the children had left home, and some had married.

At first, no great war was expected. None of the Southern states had armies when they seceded; the only armed forces were a few state guards that had been formed when John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry created the specter of a slave rebellion. It wasn't until the fall of Fort Sumter that the Confederacy saw the need to raise an army. War, if it came at all, was expected to be short, so volunteers were asked to enlist for only one year.

Joseph Hardie graduated from Princeton University in 1855 and moved to Selma, Alabama, to work in a store that he bought out in 1859. In December 1856 he married Margaret Isbell.

In November 1860 Joseph Hardie joined a group of men in Selma who, in response to Abraham Lincoln's election, organized a company of infantry for the Alabama militia. It was called the "Governor's Guard" in honor of the governor of Alabama, and Captain Thomas J. Goldsby was its commanding officer. When Alabama seceded in January 1861, the governor directed the Guard to seize Fort Morgan at the mouth of Mobile bay. The Guard took the fort without a fight and held it until May 1861 when the Guard was recalled to Montgomery, Alabama, for assignment to the newly organized Confederate army. The Guard was promptly sent to Dalton, Georgia, where it became Company A of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Joseph Hardie was elected 1st lieutenant and served as adjutant of Company A.

The 4th Alabama was immediately sent to Virginia and assigned to the army of the Shenandoah. By May 21, 1861, it was camped near Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where it was reviewed by the Inspector-General. He reported that the troops were

raw and inexperienced - wanting in even the first elements of the school of the soldier - and there is a great scarcity of proper instructors. Many of the captains are singularly ignorant of their duties. . . . To make up, however, . . . a fierce spirit animates these rough looking men . . . .

On May 23, 1861, General Joseph E. Johnston took command of the army of the Shenandoah, and the 4th Alabama was assigned to General Barnard E. Bee's division.

The history of the Fourth Regiment, which is on file in the State of Alabama Department of Archives and History, was written by its former adjutant, R.T. Coles, with the acknowledged assistance of Joseph Hardie. The first colonel of the regiment was Egbert J. Jones, and according to Coles, there was some dissatisfaction with Jones as commanding officer. Coles quoted a letter from a member of Company C:

One day while at Harpers Ferry papers were handed around in each company of the regiment for signature. . . . It was a request of Colonel Jones that he resign his commission as Colonel of the regiment. . . . I remember only that we were told by some one, he had been a captain of a Company in the Mexican War and had never gotten in a fight. . . . At this time there was no distinction socially between officers and privates and so Colonel Jones was deeply mortified. He decided to lay the case before General Joseph E. Johnston and to him he went accompanied by his friend, Joseph Hardie, Adjutant of the regiment. General Johnston being an old soldier told Colonel Jones to return the papers to the men and tell them to prefer charges against him. That settled it. There were no charges and so the matter ended.

Colonel Jones then told the men he would resign after the first battle. Coles calls the petition a "cruelly thoughtless act" and suggests that it may have had some bearing on Jones' willingness to hold the line against great odds at the first battle of Manassas.

William Tipton Hardie lived at Thornhill until 1857, and then at age seventeen he moved to New Orleans to work with his oldest brother, John T. Hardie, in the cotton factoring business. He was still living in New Orleans when Fort Sumter fell to the Confederate bombardment in April 1861, and he enlisted at age twenty on May 26, 1861, as a private in the 1st Company of the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery, raised in New Orleans. By war's end he held the rank of first sergeant.

The Washington Artillery Battalion was originally organized in 1840 and fought in the war with Mexico over the annexation of Texas. On January 16, 1861, four months before the fall of Fort Sumter, the Washington Artillery seized the United States Arsenal at Baton Rouge in the name of the State of Louisiana.

The Washington Artillery was mustered into Confederate service on May 26, 1861, with four companies and left immediately for Richmond. A fifth company was formed in June, but it fought separately with the army of Tennessee at Shiloh, Murfreesboro (Stones River) and other battles in the west until it was captured at Blakeley when Mobile fell.

The first four companies of the Washington Artillery were commanded by Major (later Colonel) James B. Walton. Lieutenant (later Captain, then Major) C.W. Squires commanded the 1st Company. William M. Owen, first lieutenant and adjutant, wrote his memoirs of the battalion's Civil War service in 1885. Entitled In Camp and Battle with the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, Owen's book gives a thorough description of the war from the artilleryman's perspective.

The Washington Artillery arrived in Richmond on June 4, 1861. From there it moved to Manassas Junction and camped on the south bank of Bull Run at "Camp Louisiana." Walton's four companies were each assigned to a different brigade. The 1st Company, in which William T. Hardie served, was sent on July 17th to Col. Jubal A. Early's brigade and placed in reserve at Blackburn's ford with several other guns from the Washington Battalion.

Mary Isabella Hardie, called "Belle," completed her formal education in 1853, but she remained at home until she married Taul Bradford on February 13, 1856. Taul Bradford was born on January 20, 1835, and attended the University of Alabama where he received an A.B. degree in 1854. He read law at Talladega and was admitted to the bar in 1855. Of Taul and Belle's first three children, only two survived childbirth, and they were all living in Talladega when war broke out.

On June 4, 1861, Taul enlisted in the 10th Alabama infantry regiment. It was organized at Montgomery under the command of Col. John H. Forney, and Taul Bradford was chosen as major on the regimental staff. On July 10th Confederate President Jefferson Davis wrote to General Joseph E. Johnston that Forney's regiment was on the way to Virginia the next day, but it did not reach Virginia in time for the first battle of Manassas.

Virginia voted to secede in May 1861, and the Confederate capital moved to Richmond. Public feeling in the North, encouraged by inflammatory newspaper editorials, spurred a Union invasion of Virginia to capture Richmond and end the rebellion. So, in July 1861 General Irvin McDowell led an army of inexperienced recruits against equally inexperienced recruits under Confederate General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, the man who started it all by firing on Fort Sumter.

Spies had warned the Confederates of the impending invasion, so advance brigades of Confederate troops were pulled back from Fairfax Court House to Manassas junction where they could join with Johnston's forces from the Shenandoah valley to form a defensive position. As the ranking officer, Johnston assumed command of the combined forces.

While the Union threat developed, Joseph Hardie's 4th Alabama left Winchester, Virginia, on July 18th and marched south to Piedmont station where it crossed the Shenandoah river. From there it traveled by train to its camp at Manassas junction, arriving on July 20, 1861.

The Confederate line began at Union Mills on Bull Run; from there it ran west a distance of about eight miles along the southern bank of Bull Run past the Manassas Gap Railroad bridge, several fords, and the stone bridge on Warrenton Turnpike. Headquarters for the Confederate army was the McLean farm house at the east end of this line, nearer the railroad station.

On July 18th the advancing Union army probed the Confederate defenses with attacks at several of the fords along Bull Run. A force of infantry, artillery and cavalry threatened Blackburn's ford, so Colonel Early and the 1st Company of the Washington Artillery with William T. Hardie were sent in as further support. About noon the Union infantry advanced while the opposing artillery fired at each other blindly. After some minutes the Union artillery got the range, and an artillery shell exploded in the midst of the Confederate battery. Several members of 1st Company were wounded, and the guns were moved forward by hand before the next shower of Union fire flew overhead. Eventually both Union and Confederate forces disengaged and withdrew. This was the first battle between the Union and Confederate armies after the fall of Fort Sumter, and William T. Hardie, as a cannoneer, fired one of the first shots in this first battle. Lieutenant Owen visited the men almost before the guns had cooled, and he described the scene:

I had the pleasure of congratulating upon their "fiery baptism" Watts Kearney, Rossiter, McGaughy, Hardie, L.E. Zebal, and others. They had all donned the high black army-hats of the enemy, found on the field, and were about as fierce a looking set of brigands in appearance as one could wish to see. They were all in high spirits and chock-full of confidence in themselves and their capacity to whip anything and anybody.

These probing attacks by the Union army and the topographical features on both sides of Bull Run led the Confederate generals to expect the major attack along the lower part of Bull Run near McLean's farm, but the same circumstances convinced the Union generals otherwise. They chose to turn the Confederate left flank on the west end of the line by circling around Sudley Spring.

On the morning of July 21st Early's brigade and Squire's battery were in reserve at McLean's farm. The Union attack began from the west before dawn, and by 7 a.m. William T. Hardie's guns were ordered to follow Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson's brigade towards the stone bridge. This battery was placed on a hill near the stone bridge and Lewis' farm house, and it spent the morning firing at the Union infantry which was then advancing against Joseph Hardie's 4th Alabama infantry. As Union gunners got their range, William T. Hardie's battery advanced by hand until his gun was on the crown of a hill exposed to the view of the Union guns. At 1 p.m. the 1st Company was moved to the Henry house hill in the middle of the heaviest fighting. William T. Hardie's gun fired directly onto the opposing artillery until the final retreat of the Union army.

On July 21st the 4th Alabama was awakened by cannon fire and moved into the line on the extreme left, on the hill near Henry house, supporting another brigade engaged in the attack. >From this position it was marched across Young's branch and the Warrenton turnpike to the top of the opposite ridge where the 4th Alabama drove back "regiment after regiment of Heintzelman's" division of Union infantry. But the 4th's flank was exposed, so it withdrew. Says Coles:

Enveloped on three sides, we were forced, by overwhelming numbers to retire, and with one accord, without orders, the 4th Alabama melted away to the rear, leaving that grand old man, Colonel Jones, wounded unto death, surrounded only with the dead and wounded, supporting himself with his arm thrown across his saddle, and seeing the men falling back he said feebly from loss of blood, "men don't run".

The men fell back across Young's branch without pursuit. After some confusion over the identity of a Union regiment on their left, the 4th attacked it, only to be repulsed again. By 11:00 a.m. the 4th Alabama was taking shelter in a wooded ravine behind the Robinson house about a half mile from the stone bridge on which the Warrenton turnpike crossed Bull Run. General Johnston took charge of the regiment because after Jones fell it had no command, and Johnston led it back to General Bee who was gathering his scattered forces. When Bee found the 4th he exclaimed, in words which Joseph Hardie must surely have heard: "Come with me and go yonder where Jackson stands like a stone wall." There, in support of Jackson, the regiment remained, but they were again forced back as the Union forces took the hills on which both the Henry and Robinson houses stood. By early afternoon Bee's division received reinforcements, and the fresh troops were able to drive the Union army completely from the field.

Joseph Hardie's 4th Alabama alone had thrown back four of Heintzelman's regiments before it fell back. The 4th suffered greater casualties than any other regiment in the battle on either side; of 560 men the 4th Alabama lost 40 killed and 156 wounded. Beauregard wrote in his report: "The Fourth Alabama also suffered severely from the deadly fire of the thousands of muskets which they so dauntlessly confronted under the immediate leadership of Bee himself." Bee was killed during the battle, not long after he made the remark which gave General Thomas J. Jackson his famous name, "Stonewall," and it was litter bearers from the 4th Alabama who carried Bee from the field.

So, at the first great Confederate victory, William T. Hardie was providing artillery support for his brother, Joseph Hardie, whose infantry regiment was taking the greatest punishment at the focus of the entire Union attack. After the battle, it was possible for the men to visit among the regiments in the area, and these brothers surely took advantage of the opportunity to share their experiences.

As a result of the success of the Confederate army at Manassas, Johnston was placed in command of the Department of Northern Virginia on October 22, 1861.

After the first battle of Manassas the Confederate army in Virginia enjoyed a peaceful period of some eight months during which it could reorganize and refit. The Washington Artillery had arrived in blue uniforms, but confusion on the battlefield led the battalion to adopt a new gray uniform for the field, and the blues were returned to Richmond for use on furlough. In September they moved to Centerville where they received the new fully tailored uniforms from New Orleans. In October William T. Hardie was promoted to corporal. In December the battalion moved from Fairfax Court House to Camp Louisiana at Blackburn's ford on Bull Run for their winter quarters. In March they withdrew to Orange Court House and finally to Richmond in mid-April 1862.

Taul Bradford's 10th Alabama infantry arrived in Virginia shortly after the first battle of Manassas, and it was assigned to the brigade of Brig. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox. His brigade bounced around among a number of command organizations during the period after Manassas, and that may have prompted Taul Bradford's decision to resign his commission in August 1861 and return home. Or perhaps he thought, as many did, that the threat to the Confederacy had ended. In September 1957, Taul Bradford's daughter, Alva Bradford Meade, wrote her grandniece, Judy Bradford, in a letter preserved by The Historic New Orleans Collection, that Taul Bradford "during the winter following First Manassas found snow had blown into his tent during the night and was stained with blood from a lung hemorrhage. After a short leave he was back in the army." Taul Bradford may have suffered from tuberculosis which influenced his decision to resign, but Alabama Confederate veterans records confirm that he resigned from the 10th Alabama infantry on August 12, 1861, well before the snows would have fallen. For soldiers from the Deep South, the notorious "snows of Virginia" were so fabled that an apocryphal story of blood-stained snow may have been combined with an actual health problem.

After the first battle of Manassas Joseph Hardie's 4th Alabama infantry was stationed at Bristow depot on the Orange & Alexandria RR about five miles southwest of Manassas junction. With all of its regimental officers wounded, Johnston assigned a temporary commanding officer who increased the men's dissatisfaction with their officers. Colonel Jones died of his wounds on September 1, 1861, and E.M. Law became colonel while Company A's commander, Thomas J. Goldsby, became lieutenant colonel of the regiment on October 28, 1861.

Just before winter set in the entire division, including the 4th Alabama, was sent to Dumfries in Prince William County, Virginia, below Washington, D.C., where Confederate batteries were trying to close the Potomac river to Union boats. The regiment remained there until the spring of 1862 in fairly comfortable tents and cabins with chimneys. Joseph Hardie's wife Margaret was able to join him.

In January 1862 the men were offered a sixty day furlough if they reenlisted for three years, and many accepted. The officers were less enthusiastic about reenlistment because the men were also promised the right to elect new officers after the original one year enlistment was up. Joseph Hardie accompanied the regiment to Yorktown in the spring, but he resigned when his one year term expired. In September 1862 Coles wrote a letter, quoted in his history of the 4th Alabama, to his own mother whose home in north Alabama had been occupied by Union forces:

Our former Adjutant, Joe Hardie, of whom I have so often written, whom I superseded, left us at Yorktown last May, has written me several kind letters. His mother, through him, sends a message to me to call on her for anything I need in the way of clothes and so forth. I also received before leaving for Maryland [and the battle of Antietam], a kind letter from his wife, who spent some time with us, when Lieutenant Hardie was our Adjutant, so if the Yankees return don't bother about me for my friends will take care of me.

Joseph Hardie must certainly have been affected by the death of his friend, Col. Jones, and the discontent of the men with their officers. For whatever reason, he resigned and returned to Talladega.

James W. Hardie and Alva F. Hardie Join Bowie's Independent Company of Cavalry

James White Hardie attended Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, and immediately following his graduation he married Margaret Caperton on May 22, 1851, in Jackson County, Alabama. She died less than two years later leaving an infant daughter. On April 23, 1856, he married Taul Bradford's sister Francina. Shortly after their marriage, James and Francina moved to Arkansas where their two children were born. He told his brothers that he opposed secession, but when war seemed inevitable, he closed his business in Arkansas and returned to Talladega to enlist.

Alva Finley Hardie was only seventeen years old when Fort Sumter fell, but he claimed he was nineteen so he would be accepted into the cavalry. It's hard to believe that Alva's mother was enthusiastic about his enlistment at such a young age, and she may have had some influence on the decision for both James and Alva to join the same unit where James could keep an eye on his younger brother. James and Alva Hardie both joined Captain Andrew W. Bowie's independent company of cavalry in early July while Joseph and William Hardie and Taul Bradford were already in Virginia.

Captain Bowie's company of cavalry was formed in the summer of 1858 for the purpose of drilling, military discipline and various feats of horsemanship, but it did not have any official sanction. Each member provided his own horse and uniform. In October 1859 John Brown made his raid on Harper's Ferry for the purpose of arming a slave revolt. Despite Brown's failure, the Southern states took the threat seriously enough to create State Guards, or militia, to put down such revolts should they occur. Governor Andrew B. Moore of Alabama accepted Bowie's independent company into the Alabama State Guards in late 1859 as the Mountain Rangers. The state supplied the members with sabers and Colt navy revolvers. In 1861, after Alabama had seceded, Governor Moore offered the Mountain Rangers to Jefferson Davis for Confederate service.

On July 4, 1861, the new recruits joined the company at Decatur, Alabama, and on August 13, 1861, the company was accepted into Confederate service by order of Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk.

The company, which consisted of 100 men, moved by rail through Iuka and Corinth, Mississippi to Union City, in the Northwest corner of Tennessee. There it joined General Polk's invasion of Kentucky which had remained in the Union. Polk's force occupied Columbus, Kentucky, approximately 15 miles south of Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio joins the Mississippi. The fort at Columbus barred Union access to the Mississippi, and James and Alva Hardie must have seen the frequent artillery duels between Union gunboats and the Confederate batteries on the bluffs overlooking the river.

Bowie's company was employed as videttes doing picket duty armed with newly supplied double barrelled shotguns. In November 1861 the company went into camp near Mayfield, Kentucky, about 60 miles east of Columbus. It was here that it was formed into Brewer's cavalry battalion with three other cavalry companies, all under the command of Maj. Richard H. Brewer. The battalion formed a picket line from Columbus to the Tennessee river, a distance of about 120 miles.

At this stage of the war there had been little fighting, and the surrounding countryside was friendly and generous. The men had slaves to cook, but they attended to their own horses. As one trooper wrote home: "Camp life agrees with me finely. I have never enjoyed better health or endured so many hardships." The hardships, of course, were nothing compared to the true deprivation and suffering to come, but at this time the cavalry must have seemed a great adventure to James and Alva Hardie.

In January 1862, U.S. Grant embarked on an expedition into Kentucky to clear out the Confederate occupiers. On February 6, 1862, Fort Henry on the Tennessee river was abandoned and the defenders retreated 15 miles to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland river. Brewer's battalion had been sent to relieve Fort Henry, but the fort surrendered before the battalion arrived. With their purpose frustrated, they moved on south to Paris, Tennessee, to protect the railroad there.

Fort Donelson fell to Union attackers on February 16, 1862, and the forces at Columbus, Kentucky, were separated from the rest of the Confederate army at Nashville, Tennessee. So, at the end of February 1862, Nashville surrendered and Columbus was abandoned. James and Alva Hardie arrived at Columbus on March 1, 1862, with the rest of Brewer's battalion just in time to dismantle the fortifications. The battalion then covered the retreat of Polk's army from Columbus and followed it to Purdy, Tennessee, near the Mississippi border.

The Confederate "Army of Mississippi" was commanded by Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston who concentrated his retreating forces at Corinth, Mississippi, the junction of the Mobile & Ohio RR and the Memphis & Charleston RR. These were the main north-south and east-west railroads serving the Mississippi valley, and their preservation was paramount.

The Union army followed Johnston's retreat, and crossed the Tennessee river at Pittsburg Landing. In response, Johnston brought Maj. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard up from New Orleans and Maj. Gen. Braxton Bragg from Mobile with a total of 15,000 men. From Corinth this force attacked the Union army at Pittsburg Landing before all of the reinforcements had crossed the river. On the first day of battle, which was fought near Shiloh church, the Union army was taken completely by surprise, and the Confederates believed they had won a great victory.

Bowie's company had been alerted for the attack on April 4, 1862, and marched out the next morning after a night spent in pelting rain without tents. On the evening of the 5th they formed up on Pea ridge, about two miles from the Union camp. The next morning Brewer's battalion was moved to the left of the line to support an artillery battery. When the Union troops broke and ran, the battalion captured an entire Union battery.

That night Bowie's company performed picket duties between the two armies and often as close as a quarter of a mile from the Union position on the river. James and Alva could probably hear the sounds of the arrival and departure of boats as the Union reinforced its army. This activity was mistaken for retreat, and the Confederates were surprised when, instead of retreating, Grant's army counterattacked the next morning. Again, Brewer's battalion fought on the Confederate left until two o'clock in the afternoon when the Confederate line faltered. Johnston was killed on the first day of battle, so it was Beauregard who ordered the retreat from Shiloh. Lt. John S. McElderry of Bowie's company carried the order from Beauregard to Bragg to withdraw from the field.

The Confederate army withdrew back to Corinth; Brewer's battalion covered the withdrawal and guarded the Mobile & Ohio RR tracks which ran north from Corinth. After a brief rest, the Union army resumed its slow march south toward Corinth. On May 25, 1862, facing encirclement and a long siege, Beauregard secretly removed his army from Corinth to Tupelo while Brewer's battalion provided cover.

As a result of his decision to withdraw, Beauregard was replaced as commander with Braxton Bragg, and a general reorganization of the army followed. Brewer's battalion was combined with four other companies from Alabama and four Mississippi companies into a regiment of ten companies under Brewer's command. Brewer was almost immediately promoted to Brigadier General and sent to Virginia (where he was killed in 1864). Command of this new cavalry regiment, to be called the 8th Confederate Cavalry Regiment, was given to Col. William B. Wade, a Mississippian who was not then a member of the regiment. While a remarkable soldier, Wade had an uncontrolled temper which occasionally led to insubordination and friction between him and those in authority over him.

On May 30, 1862, Captain Bowie resigned for reasons of health, and command of his company, now Company A of the 8th Confederate, was given to Lt. McElderry. The 8th Confederate was assigned to a new cavalry brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers.

Although Corinth had been abandoned, skirmishing continued in the area between opposing cavalry units. In June 1862, the 8th Confederate was on picket duty in Tishomingo county in the far northeast corner of Mississippi. It was there, near the village of Blackland on June 4th, that the 8th Confederate repulsed a Union attack with a daring countercharge. Company A, with James and Alva Hardie, lead the charge and suffered the worst casualties. It was here that McElderry was wounded and gave up his command to George Knox Miller.

Chalmers soon returned to an infantry command, and in July 1862 Joseph Wheeler was promoted from command of the 19th Alabama infantry to command the cavalry brigade which included the 8th Confederate cavalry.

Born September 10, 1836, Joseph Wheeler was only twenty-five years old that July. He was an extraordinary leader whose devoted staff officers compiled a book about his Civil War exploits published in 1899 under the title Campaigns of Wheeler and his Cavalry 1862-1865. Wheeler's Civil War reports show a certain self-promotion, and he was one of the few Confederate officers to return to the U.S. Army where he served after the war as Major General. He later served in the U.S. House of Representatives.

April 1862 was a watershed for the Confederacy. The fall of New Orleans on April 29, 1862, and the disastrous reversal at the battle of Shiloh made it clear to Southerners that the war would not be easily and quickly won, if it could be won at all. As the anniversary of Fort Sumter approached, the 12-month enlistments under which most of the army had volunteered were almost up. These realities led the Confederate administration to take several controversial steps, including conscription and the creation of the Partisan Rangers.

Conscription was the most controversial. An honorable southerner was expected to volunteer, so conscription implied dishonor. Nevertheless, reality overcame idealism, and on April 16, 1862, Confederate president Jefferson Davis signed the act of conscription which rendered all white males between the ages of 18 and 35 liable to military service. A number of professions were exempt, but not farmers. On September 27, 1862, the upper limit was extended to age 45. In response to the political power of its planters, and out of fear of its slaves, the Confederacy amended the conscription law on October 11, 1862, to exempt one white male for each farm with at least twenty slaves, but the amendment did not exempt men who had enlisted prior to its passage. On May 1, 1863, the exemptions were again amended to apply only to overseers on farms owned by minor children or widowed or single women.

Robert A. Hardie Joins the 31st Alabama Infantry and Taul Bradford Joins the 30th Alabama Infantry

The conscription law encouraged the formation of many new volunteer regiments. Among them were the 30th and 31st Alabama infantry regiments which were organized in Talladega in April 1862.

Robert Alexander Hardie was the fifth child of John and Mary Hardie, and he remained home after completing his education at the "common school" in Mardisville, Alabama, near Talladega. The war was already a year old when he enlisted on April 1, 1862, in Company G of the 31st Alabama infantry regiment as a lieutenant. The regiment was mustered into Confederate service at Camp Goldthwaite in Talladega on May 7, 1862, under the command of Colonel David R. Hundley.

Taul Bradford, who helped organize the unit, was elected on March 28, 1862, as lieutenant colonel of the 30th Alabama, and he served on the regimental staff. Colonel Charles M. Shelley was the commanding officer. Tipton Bradford served as a private in Company I of the 30th. The men were mustered in at Camp Curry in Talladega on April 18, 1862.

The 30th and 31st Alabama were sent to Chattanooga where they were within the Confederate Department of East Tennessee under the command of Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith. The 30th Alabama was in Brig. Gen. Carter L. Stevenson's brigade while the 31st was at first unattached. In camp in eastern Tennessee the 31st suffered serious losses from mumps and measles before it ever saw any action. In June 1862 the roster carried less than half the regiment's standard strength.

In April 1862 the Union army undertook a difficult mountain action against the Cumberland Gap, northeast of Chattanooga. After several weeks of arduous mountain passages and skirmishes, the main action occurred on June 15, 1862, at Big Creek Gap with the Union army ultimately occupying the Cumberland Gap. The 30th and 31st Alabama infantry both saw action at Cumberland Gap in June 1862.

By July 3, 1862, both the 30th and the 31st Alabama regiments were together in a brigade under Brig. Gen. S.M. Barton in a division commanded by General Stevenson. It was under Stevenson that the division fought at Tazewell, Tennessee, on August 6th, and drove off a large Union force foraging in the Clinch river valley.

As a slave state, Kentucky was expected to secede with the other southern states, but in response to strong Unionist feeling its legislature declared neutrality, instead. A neutral Kentucky seems appropriate for, ironically, both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were natives of Kentucky. Neutrality didn't last long; when Leonidas Polk invaded the western end of the state in July 1861 an indignant legislature declared for the Union, and its Confederate sympathizing governor left for the south. When Polk withdrew from Kentucky in March 1862 the state remained firmly in Union hands. After the loss at Shiloh and the withdrawal from Corinth, the Union also controlled western Tennessee as well as northern Mississippi and northwest Alabama. These Union armies controlled a line from Western Arkansas to the Cumberland Gap.

For Confederate politicians and soldiers, Kentucky remained an attractive objective. It was widely believed that Kentuckians would flock to the Confederate cause if only they were given the opportunity. Consequently, in the summer of 1862 the Confederate government devised a plan to invade Kentucky and then drive the Union army out of Tennessee. The invasion was also intended to coincide with Lee's invasion of Maryland. Kirby Smith's army in eastern Tennessee would march toward Lexington, Kentucky, while Braxton Bragg's army would strike north from Chattanooga. Before the invasion began, John Hunt Morgan conducted his famous raid through Kentucky from July 4th to July 28th.

Bragg's army was in northern Mississippi, so he had to move it by rail from the Tupelo area to Mobile and then by rail northeast to Atlanta where it again changed rail lines for Chattanooga. Bragg left about a third of his force in Mississippi under the command of Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn and sent the rest to Chattanooga beginning on July 23, 1862. Within two weeks all of Bragg's army had arrived in Chattanooga.

Kirby Smith's army, which included C.L. Stevenson's division with both Taul Bradford's 30th Alabama and Robert Hardie's 31st Alabama infantry regiments, entered Kentucky on August 15, 1862, and took possession of Barbourville while Stevenson blocked the Union force at Cumberland Gap. After the Union troops withdrew from the Cumberland Gap, Stevenson's division followed Smith into Kentucky on August 19th and marched north as far as Versailles, Kentucky, between Lexington and Frankfort. On August 30th Smith's army drove a smaller force of Union defenders out of Richmond and went on to occupy Lexington and then Frankfort where he installed a new Confederate governor. Meanwhile, Bragg's army moved north on a parallel march; it entered Kentucky near Tompkinsville and reached Munfordville on September 17th.

The Union army was also on the move. Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell left Corinth, Mississippi, with part of the force that had been concentrated there. He was able to take the rail line directly east to Stevenson, Alabama, where he turned north on another rail line through Nashville, Tennessee, to Louisville, Kentucky.

Buell confronted Bragg and Smith at Perryville on October 7-8th, but neither army committed its full strength. After a preliminary skirmish on the 7th and a tentative engagement between elements of both armies on the 8th, Bragg abandoned the invasion in the belief that he was vastly outnumbered. Despite the purpose of the invasion, there was no decisive battle, and both Bragg and Kirby Smith retreated as they had come. Stevenson's division did not fight at either Richmond or Perryville, but it did hold off the Union pursuers at Harrodsburg and Lancaster, Kentucky, while in retreat. By October 25th Stevenson's division was back in camp at Blain's crossroads, near Knoxville, Tennessee. Although there was little fighting for Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie during this campaign, there was a lot of marching for their men. All of the reports stress the lack of water, the dust, and the miserable condition of the roads. As a result, the withdrawal from Kentucky was disorganized in the extreme. Kirby Smith wrote to Bragg on October 22nd: "My men have suffered on this march everything excepting actual starvation." It's little wonder that the men of Kentucky did not flock to the Confederate standard. It was during this campaign that Robert Hardie was elected captain on October 17, 1862, and placed in command of Company B when its commanding officer resigned.

One source indicates that Taul Bradford resigned from the 30^th Alabama Infantry on November 10, 1862, but it has not been confirmed. If it is correct, then references to Taul Bradford as a member of the 30^th Alabama Infantry after November 1862 would be incorrect.

Corinth and Iuka, Mississippi, were located at important junctions of the only uninterrupted rail line within the Confederacy which ran between the Mississippi river and the east coast. When the Union army captured Corinth and occupied Iuka after the battle of Shiloh, it cut these important railway lines and blocked Confederate traffic between Chattanooga and Memphis. Consequently, it was another objective of the invasion of Kentucky to weaken the defenses of both cities by drawing off defenders to eastern Tennessee. A Confederate force of 15,000 under Maj. Gen. Sterling Price was successful in driving out the Union defenders from Iuka on September 14, 1862, but after a fight on the 19th he abandoned the town in the face of a two pronged attack by reinforcements. On October 3, 1862, a Confederate force, under Van Dorn attacked Corinth. The Confederates drove the Union outer defenders back despite "terrific volleys of shell, grape, and canister," according to the report of one of the brigade commanders, Brig. Gen. Albert Rust. On the morning of October 4th, the Confederate attack was broken on the breastworks and rifle pits which formed the inner defenses. Rust's report said that one of his regiments, which he identifies as the 31st Alabama, did not perform well:

I regret that a sense of duty to the service and justice to the balance of the brigade will not allow me to bestow the same unmixed praise upon the Thirty-First Alabama Regiment. A portion of this regiment, in spite of the gallantry of their colonel and his efforts to make them do their duty, following the example of some of its commanding officers, behaved disgracefully. At a most critical moment it broke in disorder and all efforts to restore it were unavailing.

The identification of the 31st Alabama is almost certainly an error on Rust's part, for the 31st is clearly identified as a part of Barton's brigade which was in eastern Tennessee at the time. Although the 31st is not individually mentioned in any of the reports of the invasion of Kentucky, it would have been senseless for the 31st to have been transferred west at the same time that Bragg was going to such trouble to move his army east. Moreover, Confederate records indicate that the 30th and the 31st Alabama infantry regiments were reorganized in early December 1862 into a brigade with three other Alabama regiments near Tullahoma, Tennessee, commanded by Brig. Gen. E.D. Tracy. Rust had taken command of his brigade in Corinth only a day or two before the battle, and he may have been genuinely ignorant of its constituent regiments. Moreover, the battle resulted in charges against Van Dorn for waiting to attack the inner defenses on the morning of October 4th rather than follow up his initial success by attacking on the evening before. Rust, who had just been transferred into the command, was one of the witnesses against Van Dorn, so Rust's report, which was written before the hearing, may not have received his full attention.

During Gen. Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky in the late summer of 1862, Wade's 8th Confederate Cavalry operated under Brig. Gen. Joseph Wheeler to destroy railroads supplying the opposing Union forces and to provide intelligence of the movement of those forces. When the invasion was abandoned, Bragg's army withdrew to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a town about a fourth of the way from Nashville to Chattanooga.

It was during this interval at Murfreesboro that Alva Hardie transferred on September 23, 1862, out of Wade's 8th Confederate cavalry into the 51st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, Partisan Rangers. He served in Company A under Major James T. Dye.

Passage of the Partisan Rangers Act was the other controversial action taken in April 1862 by the Confederacy. It authorized the creation of special troops to be used primarily on detached duty to meet emergencies as they arose; they were intended to operate behind Union lines on the model of Morgan's Raiders as free-booting cavalry units which profited from the goods seized on their raids. The Alabama 51st Cavalry Regiment, Partisan Rangers, was such a unit. Although it was the first Alabama regiment of Partisan Rangers, it was named the 51st to avoid confusion with the original 1st regiment of regular Alabama cavalry. The 51st was organized in August by Col. John Tyler Morgan with nine companies, and on September 2, 1862, it was assigned to the Army of Tennessee.

Why did Alva Hardie transfer to the 51st Alabama cavalry? Naturally, any answer is speculative in the absence of contemporary sources, but it seems obvious. John Tyler Morgan was the first cousin of John Hunt Morgan who achieved such fame in Kentucky in command of the model for the partisan rangers. Alva had already served in the cavalry for fifteen months, and his experience, especially in a major battle like Shiloh, had surely hardened him. Moreover, Alva must have known John Tyler Morgan well. John Tyler Morgan’s business travels had frequently taken him by Thornhill where he met and married Cornelia Willis, the niece and ward of Mrs. Hardie, on February 11, 1846. The young couple lived for a time at Thornhill before moving to Tuskegee and on to Selma.

At some point in time these cavalrymen became killers. To be sure, the infantrymen and artillerymen killed their enemy, and sometimes it was with bayonets and grape shot. But for the most part, the infantry and artillery killed at a distance with rifles and cannon; their enemy were usually faceless forms. The cavalry was at first armed only with shotguns, pistols and sabers, so it was forced to fight up close where, in the moment or two before death, the cavalryman might form an impression his enemy. Moreover, the infantry and artillery fought rarely and usually after ponderous troop movements among large bodies of their fellow soldiers. The cavalry fought often, and sometimes continuously. As pickets and scouts they fought in small groups after seeking out their enemy. That made them killers. For the benefit of Union General-in-chief H.W. Halleck, Sherman described the Confederate cavalry in a letter dated September 13, 1863:

[T]he young bloods of the South, sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard players, and sportsmen - men who never did work nor never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave; fine riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every sense. . . . As long as they have good horses, plenty of forage, and an open country, they are happy. This is a larger class than most men supposed, and are the most dangerous set of men which this war has turned loose upon the world. They are splendid riders, shots, and utterly reckless. Stuart, John Morgan, Forrest, and Jackson are the types and leaders of this class. This class of men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.

And as we shall see, they were later accused of murder for shooting their captives, a charge they denied, but in the circumstances we can readily believe. Perhaps such a metamorphosis influenced Alva Hardie to transfer to a partisan ranger company. If so, it is even more astounding that after the war he was able to return home to a prosaic life, marry and raise a family. Perhaps, too, he wanted to escape from his older brother; Alva was then eighteen years old, and James was thirty-one. If so, he did not escape far. James Hardie remained with Wade's 8th Confederate cavalry regiment, and both the 8th Confederate cavalry and the 51st Alabama cavalry continued to operate together under Wheeler.

At the end of December 1862 Wheeler's cavalry participated in three days of fighting on the Stones river at Murfreesboro. David Cozzens has written a thorough analysis of the battle of Stones river in No Better Place to Die, published in 1990.

After Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky was repulsed, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans took command of the U.S. Army of the Cumberland at Bowling Green, Kentucky, on October 30, 1862. The rail lines between Louisville and Nashville had been destroyed by Confederate cavalry, and communications and supplies were threatened. To secure his communications, Rosecrans took his army unopposed to Nashville on November 4, 1862. Meanwhile, on November 26, 1862, Bragg established his headquarters in Murfreesboro, about thirty-five miles to the southeast.

Rosecrans was not allowed to remain on the defensive. Union losses at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bayou, created political demands for a Union victory in Tennessee. The Union attack from Nashville to Murfreesboro began in stages on December 24, 1862. Wheeler's brigade was about half way between the two towns, bivouacked along Stewart's creek across the Murfreesboro-Nashville Turnpike. From there he should have been able to cover the direct approach to Murfreesboro, but advance elements of the Union army surprised one of Wheeler's outposts on the pike on December 26th. Moreover, Wheeler's reports of Union movements the next day were late and incomplete. As a consequence, Rosecrans' force was able to reach Murfreesboro without significant resistance from Bragg's army.

On Monday, December 29, 1862, the armies opposed each other about two miles north of Murfreesboro on the left (or northwest) bank of the west fork of the Stones river. The next two days were taken up by skirmishes as the armies probed each other's positions. The weather was cold and rainy, but to conceal their position and strength Confederate camp fires were forbidden. At dawn on the 31st, the Confederate left wing attacked the Union right while its infantry was still breakfasting. The Union troops were shattered and fell back until a stubborn Ohio cavalry brigade halted the Confederate advance. Brig. Gen. Philip Sheridan's division in the Union center threw back the Confederate assault under Maj. Gen. John C. Breckenridge with devastating losses to the Confederates. Skirmishing filled January 1st, and the Confederates were unable to dislodge Rosecrans' army the next day despite another infantry assault.

Wheeler's men, however, were fighting their own battles. On December 27th Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama under John T. Morgan and James Hardie's 8th Confederate under W.B. Wade fought on the Union right where they encountered Union cavalry on the Jefferson Pike at Stewart's creek. The next day the 51st formed a line of battle to the east of the Nashville pike about 8 miles from Murfreesboro with only slight skirmishing.

On December 29th Wheeler's cavalry was on the extreme right of the line of battle, and at midnight the men started out for the Union rear. At daylight on the 30th they reached Jefferson, about ten miles north of Murfreesboro, where they attacked a brigade wagon train which they destroyed. About five miles to the northwest at LaVergne they again attacked and destroyed a large wagon train, and at Rock Springs they attacked and destroyed still a third wagon train. The next morning they proceeded to the left flank of their own army which was already engaged in the first day of the main battle. On January 1st they again embarked on a circuit of the Union lines attacking another wagon train at LaVergne. On January 3rd the troop circled behind the Union lines for a third time, attacking a large ammunition train at Cox's hill. This train, which Union reports identify as 95 "ammunition and hospital" wagons, was upset, but an infantry brigade drove off Wheeler's men before the wagons could be destroyed.

With Rosecrans still in the field, Bragg ordered his army to withdraw on January 3rd. Wheeler's cavalry took up rear guard positions about three miles south of Murfreesboro. Both sides suffered heavy losses, and Bragg's decision to withdraw has been much debated. Rosecrans' lack of enthusiasm for pursuit is generally attributed to the destruction of his supplies by Wheeler's cavalry. Nevertheless, Wheeler has come in for criticism because his intelligence gathering abilities did not meet his capability for destruction. Cozzens suggests that Bragg's willingness to order a disastrous second infantry assault on January 2nd may have been the result of Wheeler's incorrect report that Rosecrans planned to retreat, while Bragg's eagerness to withdraw the next day may have been the result of equally incorrect reports that Rosecrans was being reinforced.

Bragg took his army to the Duck river valley twenty miles to the south, near Shelbyville, Tennessee, and it spent the rest of the winter there. But Wheeler's cavalry did not abandon its harassment of the Union force. In mid-January his troops continued to burn bridges in the Union rear and attack river traffic on the Cumberland river. They captured the steamer Hastings with sick and wounded Union soldiers, and the surgeon in charge claimed the Confederates were "intoxicated and getting more so." The steamer Charter, with mostly commissary stores, was burned, and the Union reports say that "at least four more freight boats" were destroyed. Rosecrans complained of the "barbarism" of the Wheeler raid, but the Confederate Congress passed a resolution of thanks to Wheeler.

John Timmons Hardie moved to New Orleans in the Spring of 1853. On November 8, 1854 he married Ann Eliza Gary in Tuskegee, Alabama. Four of their children were born before the war began; two in Tuskegee and two in New Orleans. John T. Hardie & Co. prospered in the cotton trading business, but John T. Hardie was willing to sacrifice that prosperity in the interest of Confederate success by supporting an embargo of cotton. It was one of the South's strategies to stop all shipments of cotton from the South to English mills until the British recognized the new Confederacy. John T. Hardie joined this cause with nearly one hundred other cotton factors in New Orleans despite the obvious individual sacrifice. When it appeared that the planters might not follow this plan, these factors petitioned the governor on September 23, 1861, to take steps to bar cotton shipments to the port of New Orleans.

On April 29, 1862, New Orleans was captured by David G. Farragut at the head of the Union fleet. Baton Rouge fell next. Soon planters on the Confederate side of the lines were trading cotton with Union officials in New Orleans. Although cotton prices increased to six times their prewar levels, the strategy never induced any European recognition for the South.

John T. Hardie's effort to cut off the cotton trade earned him an assessment by the occupying Union governor. According to General Order No. 55 dated August 4, 1862, there was a need to relieve the "destitute poor" of the city, and General Butler decided that the cost of relief should be borne by "those who have endeavored to destroy the commercial prosperity of the city, upon which the welfare of its inhabitants depends." He was referring to the

cotton brokers who, claiming to control that great interest in New Orleans, to which she is so much indebted for her wealth, published in the newspapers, in October, 1861, a manifesto, deliberately advising the planters not to bring their produce to the city; a measure which brought ruin at the same time upon the producer and the city. This act sufficiently testifies to the malignity of these traitors, as well to the Government as their neighbors, and it is to be regretted that their ability to relieve their fellow-citizens is not equal to their facilities for injuring them.

John T. Hardie & Co. was placed in the category which was assessed the highest amount, $500. Perhaps the high assessment is evidence of John T. Hardie's relative prosperity, or perhaps it reflects that he had already left the city to join the Confederate army.

In any event, John T. Hardie closed his business soon after the fall of New Orleans and enlisted in Company D of Hughes Battalion of Mississippi cavalry. According to Military History of Mississippi: 1803-1898 by Dunbar Rowland, Hughes battalion was organized by Henry Hughes as a partisan ranger corps in late spring and early summer 1862 with both infantry and cavalry elements. The cavalry part remained permanently in service under the command of Colonel Christopher C. Wilbourn. As New Orleans was in Union hands John T. Hardie had to slip through Union lines to join a Mississippi regiment. It is also probable that this is the time he took his family to Macon County, Alabama, where his wife Ann Eliza Gary gave birth to their daughter Ann Eliza on October 5, 1862. He left his wife there with her mother; her father had died before their marriage.

Official reports indicate that on October 22, 1862, the Hughes battalion was at Camp Ashley in Port Hudson, Louisiana, a fortified encampment in East Feliciana parish, about 25 miles north of Baton Rouge. On December 15, 1862, John T. Hardie was elected junior second lieutenant of Company D at Camp Ashley. He received notice of his election by mail because he was on furlough in Macon County from December 10, 1862, until January 10, 1863.

During late 1862 one of the Union objectives was to open the Mississippi river from Memphis to New Orleans. The chief obstacles were the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg and the fort 240 river miles to the south at Port Hudson, Louisiana. With 40,000 men U.S. Grant moved down from Tennessee along the Mississippi Central Railroad and W.T. Sherman moved down the Mississippi river in a two-pronged drive. Grant was stopped at Oxford, Mississippi, by Confederate cavalry who cut his supply lines.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis had visited Murfreesboro on December 12, 1862, and in consultation with his generals decided that Rosecrans' intentions were defensive. So, on December 16, 1862, Carter L. Stevenson's division, with Robert Hardie in the 31st Alabama infantry and Taul Bradford in the 30th Alabama infantry, was transferred to Mississippi. The direct railroad line from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Corinth, Mississippi, remained in Union control, so Stevenson's division reversed the route taken by Bragg's army the previous July: by rail from Chattanooga to Atlanta, then to Mobile, Alabama, by way of Montgomery, and then to Jackson by way of Meridian, Mississippi. It took three weeks. From Jackson they marched twelve miles north of Vicksburg to Chickasaw Bayou to meet Sherman's attack.

Sherman abandoned his attack after an unsuccessful assault on the Confederate defenses at Chickasaw Bayou. Both the 30th and 31st Alabama with Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie saw action against Sherman's invasion at Chickasaw Bayou in December 1862. Moreover, the 31st Alabama was credited with "a strong desire to meet the enemy" according to its brigade commander.

April 1862 also saw resumption of activity back in Virginia where William was the only Hardie who remained. The Union army made another try to take Richmond with a landing by approximately 100,000 men under the command of George B. McClellan on the peninsula formed by the James and the York rivers.

The twenty guns of the Washington Artillery were part of a reserve brigade of artillery under Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton, Chief of Artillery on the staff of the commanding general, Joseph E. Johnston. The Washington Artillery remained under General Pendleton until June when Walton was ordered to report to General Longstreet where he became the general's chief of artillery. The battalion was then assigned as reserve under General Longstreet, and batteries were assigned as needed to various elements of his army during the campaign. For example, Captain Rosser's battery was at the siege of Yorktown; two were at the battle at Mechanicsville bridge where they were identified in Union dispatches.

Johnston retreated from Yorktown back up the peninsula to within six miles of Richmond when he was wounded on May 31, 1862, in the battle of Seven Pines. The army was then placed under the command of General Robert E. Lee who had been serving on the personal staff of Jefferson Davis.

Relying on information gathered by J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry, Lee attacked McClellan's army on June 26, 1862, to begin the Seven Days' battles, a series of encounters on both sides of the Chickahominy river.

On July 1, 1862, at the close of the Seven Days, the two armies fought an artillery battle at Malvern Hill. McClellan placed 350 guns on a plateau where they overlooked the 160 guns of the Confederates. From their elevated position the Union guns, including enormous siege guns, destroyed the lighter Confederate guns below. Despite the destruction of his artillery, Lee ordered an infantry assault which was decimated by the Union guns then freed from opposing artillery. The battle ended at dark as the assault was abandoned.

The Washington Artillery was spared the destruction at Malvern Hill; it had been held in reserve and never brought up. Pendleton complained in his report that "not one-half of the division batteries were brought into action." Indeed, Pendleton argued that throughout the Seven Days "too little was thrown into action at once," but he did acknowledge that a main cause of this was the "prevalence of woods and swamps."

Malvern Hill was a defensive position which had been taken by McClellan in retreat. Therefore, his victory did not divert the Union army from its retreat to Harrison's Landing, its original embarkation. In order to block Union efforts to refit its army, on July 5, 1862, Captain Squires and the 1st Company of Washington Artillery joined Col. Stephen D. Lee in an effort to prevent McClellan's resupply. Squires placed his battery on a bluff overlooking the James river, and from there they shelled Union gunboats, transports and tugs. For three days William T. Hardie joined a game of cat and mouse, firing and then moving when the 1st Company's position was discovered by the gunboats.

In July 1862 R.E. Lee reorganized the Army of Northern Virginia into two corps, one under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet and the other under Jackson. Col. Walton's battalion remained in the corps commanded by Longstreet. Also in July 1862, William T. Hardie was promoted to Sergeant.

In August 1862 Union and Confederate forces met again at Manassas. The 1st Company of Washington Artillery was engaged in reconnaissance on the Rappahannock river on August 22, 1862, as Union forces were working their way towards Richmond. On the morning of the 23rd, William T. Hardie's battery was at Rappahannock station across the river from a Union battery with which it held an artillery duel as the early morning fog lifted. The Union troops were driven back after a furious battle with the loss of four killed and five wounded from the 1st Company. This was one of several encounters which slowed the Union advance to Manassas.

On August 25th Jackson took his army corps on a semi-circular march; first to the northwest along the Rappahannock and then east on August 26th along the Manassas Gap Railroad to Manassas junction which was the main Union supply base. After taking everything they could carry, the Confederate troops destroyed the base and moved off to the northwest where Jackson took position along an unfinished railroad line. Jackson withstood the first Union efforts to drive him out, but as the Union forces closed in on him on August 29th, Longstreet's corps joined Jackson on his right. The 1st and 3rd companies of Washington Artillery entered the battle at Groveton. The 1st with William T. Hardie was on the left and the 3rd was on the right facing the Union left flank where both companies "poured destructive fire into their affrighted ranks," according to Walton. The next day Longstreet wheeled the artillery around the Union left and crushed them back from Groveton to Henry house hill. On the 31st the Union army retreated, while William T. Hardie's company pursued it as far as Germantown.

Longstreet's corps did not see the same action as Jackson's did, and the Washington Artillery was not as hard pressed at the second battle of Manassas as they had been during the artillery duel a week earlier at Rappahannock station. Yet, as Walton exulted, the battle was "fought almost on the same ground and in sight of the field where our guns first pealed forth a little more than a year before."

Although Lee's army was poorly supplied, it was flush with victory at second Manassas. Instead of returning to Richmond, Lee urged Jefferson Davis to authorize an invasion of Maryland; it might attract support from a slave state, it might cut the capital's railroad links to the West, and it might force a Union peace initiative. So, on September 4, 1862, Lee's army of 50,000 men crossed the Potomac into Maryland thirty-five miles above Washington. The Union army with 80,000 men under McClellan moved ponderously to Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the two armies met across Antietam creek.

Longstreet's corps was on the Confederate right, and it opposed Ambrose E. Burnside's Union corps. The Washington Artillery took its place on September 15th in this right wing. William T. Hardie's 1st Company with four guns was in front of Sharpsburg on the right of the turnpike running through the center of the town. Although fired upon by the Union batteries, the shorter range of the Washington Artillery's guns did not permit a reply. The next day saw the 1st Company in an artillery duel that General Longstreet silenced after forty minutes because there was no ammunition to spare.

On September 17th the heavy fighting began on the left as Jackson's corps absorbed attacks from the front and left. On Longstreet's front Walton's battalion and a battalion under Col. Stephen D. Lee provided artillery support for a brigade of infantry commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert A. Toombs. The early action was limited to preventing the union infantry from crossing the creek on "Burnside Bridge," and the artillerymen received damaging fire from Union sharpshooters on the other side of the creek. The bridge was a pivotal part of the battle on Longstreet's front, and two regiments of Union infantry finally crossed it by early afternoon. Once the bridge had been taken, the remaining units of Burnside's three divisions combined to face Toombs' single brigade. The artillery fire repelled charging Union infantry again and again until dark. William T. Hardie's battery exhausted its ammunition in mid-afternoon, so it left a single gun in place to help its relief and retired to refill its ammunition wagon. On its return it joined S.D. Lee's battalion in driving back Union infantry that reached within 150 yards of the batteries. At dusk, just as Longstreet's front was about to collapse, A.P. Hill's division arrived from Harper's Ferry to drive Burnside's divisions back across the creek.

When the slaughter ended at Sharpsburg the Union claimed a great success, and R.E. Lee escaped with an army that had suffered substantial casualties. The Washington Artillery returned south to Culpeper, Virginia, where it set about building a camp for its winter quarters and entertaining its men with amateur theatricals.

The Washington Artillery had lost men, horses and guns to a disabling degree. As a result, Walton was confronted with a demand for complete reorganization of his battalion.

The army bureaucracy was a formidable foe, but the Washington Artillery faced it as fearlessly as it had the Union army. Pendleton, by then Chief of Artillery for the entire Army of Northern Virginia, complained that the army was burdened with too many artillery companies which were a financial drain in every way, but "especially in its enormous consumption of horses." Four batteries required a constant supply of 310 horses. Each company, or battery, of the Washington Artillery consisted of four guns, and each gun required men to load, aim and fire the gun as well as men to handle the horses which had to remain in the thick of battle to move the guns at a moment's notice. Under normal circumstances, the Washington Artillery would consist of 16 caissons, 16 gun carriages, a forge and other equipment, 200 horses and 300 men. Immediately after the battle at Sharpsburg, the Washington Artillery could report only 212 men present, or about two-thirds of its service standard. State jealousies within the Confederacy prohibited the mingling of citizens of different states in the same unit, and recruits from Louisiana were a remote prospect in Virginia. This caused Pendleton to recommend to Lee that the four companies be consolidated into two.

Walton objected strenuously that the proposed reduction was prohibited by the terms of the original organization of the battalion and the conditions of its acceptance into Confederate service. Lee relented only so much as to recommend to the Secretary of War that the four companies be reduced to three provided it could be done "without violating plighted faith."

While its reorganization remained unresolved, all four companies of the Washington Artillery participated in the battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia, where the Confederacy inflicted one of the worst defeats of the war on the Union army. It was also the battle in which William T. Hardie was wounded.

On November 7, 1862, Burnside assumed command of the entire U.S. Army of the Potomac as it moved south toward Richmond with 110,000 men. The army paused on the Rappahannock opposite Fredericksburg to await pontoons needed to bridge the river. By the time the pontoons arrived, R.E. Lee, in command of 75,000 men, had placed Longstreet's corps, including the four companies of the Washington Artillery, on the left on Marye's hill above the town and Jackson's corps on the right on Prospect hill. The 1st Company's battery, still under the command of Squires, consisted of two 3-inch rifled cannon and one 10-pounder Parrot gun. The Parrot gun was also a 3-inch rifled cannon, but it required special shells to accomplish muzzle loading. These rifled guns had about twice the range of the smooth bored Napoleons. The other companies had four 12-pound light guns (Napoleons) and two 12-pound howitzers.

The battle covered three days from December 11th to the 13th with most of the fighting on the final day. Fog shrouded the Rappahannock valley on the first day, but the Union artillery bombarded the town all day without any response from Walton's batteries. The men spent the night beside their guns. The fog lifted late the next afternoon, and Walton's batteries fired on a heavy column below the town. After the column dispersed, Walton's batteries ceased firing and received the Union bombardment without replying. When night fell the men slept again beside their guns. Under cover of the fog the Union troops had crossed the river and massed in the town. Shortly after noon on the 13th they began their advance in front of Marye's hill. Wave after wave of Union infantry were gunned down by the constant fire of Walton's artillery while they themselves took heavy fire from the Union artillery and sharpshooters. After four and a half hours of constant firing, the Washington Artillery had exhausted its ammunition and lost 3 killed and 23 wounded, among whom was William T. Hardie. With these losses the battalion relinquished its position to fresh batteries from Alexander's Battalion. The Union army loses were so appalling that Burnside withdrew his forces, and the march on Richmond was abandoned.

After the battle at Fredericksburg, and perhaps as a result of the battalion's performance, it was decided that Walton would keep his full four companies. In February 1863 Pendleton submitted a new plan of reorganization in which the Washington Artillery remained as before, and he noted laconically: "Colonel Walton, of course, remains as long as he wishes in command of this. He is known to be from Louisiana." Evidently Walton's origin was all the explanation necessary for these Virginians.

The artillery reorganization also removed artillery batteries from the usual brigade command and organized them into battalions of four batteries each under division command. Moreover, all the new battalions of each corps were to report to, and be supervised by Pendleton himself as Chief of Artillery. The reorganization also put the Washington Artillery in a reserve status in Longstreet's corps. So, Walton won his battle with the bureaucracy, but Pendleton remained in control.

With the size of his command assured, Walton turned south to recruit replacements from Louisiana while the men returned to their winter quarters at Culpeper. These quarters were far less comfortable than the previous winter's camp. They had no huts, and the men had to dig holes in the ground which they covered with canvas. Fireplaces dug in the hole provided warmth, and straw on the bottom kept out the damp. The officers, of course, had large heated tents.

The recruiters could not actually go to New Orleans because it was under Union control, so Walton, his adjutant, and a commissioned officer and non-commissioned officer from each company went to Mobile. Walton and his adjutant put up at the old Battle House hotel in Mobile while the officers went to recruiting stations as near as possible to New Orleans. Relying on assistance within the city, enough new recruits were added to the battalion roster to man the full complement of guns. The last of the recruiters returned to Virginia at the end of April 1863.

After recovering from his wounds William T. Hardie returned to duty in February 1863. One source says he visited Talladega while recovering from his wounds. As a non-commissioned officer, he would have been eligible for the recruiting trip to Mobile, and it makes sense that he would have visited Talladega as part of the recruiting trip. Confederate veteran's records say that he was detached for recruiting, but the time he is said to have been recruiting is during the Gettysburg campaign. Since this is the only recruiting detail discussed in William M. Owen's book, it is likely that William T. Hardie did join this trip to Mobile.

As 1863 began, William T. Hardie was in his winter camp in Virginia. Alva Hardie and James Hardie were providing cavalry support for Braxton Bragg's army on the Duck river near Shelbyville, Tennessee. Robert Hardie and Taul Bradford were at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and John T. Hardie was returning from his furlough to Camp Ashley near Port Hudson, Louisiana. Joseph Hardie was in Talladega in command of a battalion of reserve cavalry.

The Confederates in Mississippi enjoyed the security of the "Gibraltar of the West" from January 1863 until April 1863 when Grant unleashed his second two-pronged attack on Vicksburg.

Robert Hardie and Taul Bradford and their infantry regiments faced the first of these two forces while John T. Hardie's cavalry regiment faced the second.

Grant's river landing consisted of a fleet of gunboats and troop transports which slipped by the Vicksburg batteries on April 16, 1863. Despite heavy fire only one of the three transports and none of the eight gunboats were sunk. On April 22nd six steamers and twelve more barges ran the batteries around midnight after the moon had set. Houses on the Louisiana side of the river were set on fire to provide light for the gunners, heavy bombardment from the batteries sank only one of the steamers while the remainder passed despite substantial damage.

The flotilla disembarked on the west side of the river and assembled north of Hard Times, Louisiana, opposite Grand Gulf, Mississippi. On April 30th the Union forces embarked again and were taken in the late afternoon across the river to Bruinsburg, Mississippi. Marching at night, the Union troops first encountered the Confederate defenders at 1:00 a.m. on the road to Port Gibson.

Over 20,000 Union soldiers were landed at Bruinsburg, but the Confederate commander at Vicksburg, Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, did not fully appreciate the threat presented by the force which had passed his batteries. Moreover, the attack was expected at Grand Gulf which was bombarded by the Union gunboats on April 29th. Therefore, Brig. Gen. John S. Bowen, who commanded the brigade at Grand Gulf, sent out only 750 men under Brig. Gen. E.M. Green early on April 30th to cover the two roads from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson.

A brigade from C.L. Stevenson's division, consisting of a battery of artillery and the 20th, 23rd, 30th and 31st Alabama infantry regiments under Brig. Gen. Edward D. Tracy, was also sent to Port Gibson from Warrenton late in the evening of April 29th. They marched over forty miles in under 27 hours with little food to reach Port Gibson on the night of April 30th. They were immediately formed into battle lines and allowed to sleep at their positions until they were aroused by the attacks on Green's pickets at about 1:00 a.m. Robert Hardie was with the 31st Alabama and Taul Bradford was with the 30th Alabama. Green and Tracy's brigades, only 2300 men, met the first Union attack early on May 1st.

A brigade under Brig. Gen. W.E. Baldwin and another under Col. F.M. Cockerell arrived late in the morning of May 1st from Grand Gulf to bring to approximately 5200 the total number of Confederate forces who faced the five divisions under Grant's command. Maj. Gen. William W. Loring's division from Jackson, Mississippi, and Brig. Gen. A.W. Reynold's brigade from Stevenson's division left too late on May 1st to reach Port Gibson to provide additional reinforcements.

Tracy's Brigade began the battle about five miles down Bayou Pierre from Port Gibson towards Bruinsburg. The artillery battery of two howitzers was on a ridge with the 30th Alabama under Col. C.M. Shelley on either side of the battery. The 20th Alabama was on the far right only 800 yards from Bayou Pierre, and the 31st Alabama was on the left of the 30th. The 23rd Alabama and the other two howitzers supported Green even further on the left. There was nearly a mile between the left flank of the 31st Alabama and Green's forces to the south. The nine companies of the 31st were placed in line in a gully or ravine. The terrain seems to have been dominated by several of these ravines formed by the washes running north to Bayou Pierre. They were more or less perpendicular to the Union line of advance, and nearly all the Union reports of the battle complain bitterly about the vines, canebrake and trees which impeded their ability to cross these ravines.

Tracy's battery was opposed by the 7th Michigan Artillery Battery about 1¼ miles distant. It opened fire at 7:30 a.m. and traded artillery fire for 2½ hours when the effectiveness of the Confederate guns forced the Union guns to move to a more protected place and accept relief from the 1st Wisconsin Battery. The first infantry regiment to attack Tracy's force was the 49th Indiana which encountered the 31st Alabama in the ravine. After an hour of exchanging small-arms fire with the 31st, the 49th Indiana was relieved by the 42nd Ohio and given an hours rest. The 42nd Ohio received "severe fire" from the 30th and 31st Alabama when it advanced to the edge of the ravine with two other regiments. Soon the 42nd Ohio was relieved by the 120th Ohio which also found that the ravine gave the 31st Alabama effective cover. In turn the 120th Ohio was relieved by the 69th Indiana supported by the 49th Indiana.

Tracy's brigade, of course, had no relief. General Tracy was killed early in the morning, and Col. I.W. Garrott assumed command. The two artillery pieces were disabled in midmorning, and two other pieces were rushed in from Green's brigade to a more protected position. By 11 o'clock the 30th Alabama's ammunition was dangerously low, but it could not resupply because its ammunition train had not yet caught up with it. Nevertheless, at 2 o'clock they were told to hold their position "at all hazards." Col. D.R. Hundley, commander of the 31st Alabama was severely wounded about noon, and his command fell to Lt. Col. T.M. Arrington.

The 6th Missouri (C.S.A.) infantry, which had arrived with Cockerell's brigade, helped to recapture a section of Tracy's artillery before it became necessary to withdraw. In order to cover their withdrawal, Col. Eugene Erwin loudly instructed his company commanders to "fix bayonets" in hopes the nearby 49th Indiana would expect a charge. As the 49th Indiana braced for the charge, the 6th Missouri fired a volley and moved off across Bayou Pierre. The 49th Indiana proudly reported breaking this charge from "the advantage" of a hill, but did not follow the retreating Missourians. By 5 o'clock in the evening all of the Confederate defenders of Port Gibson had retired back across Bayou Pierre. Their losses were 68 killed, 380 wounded and 384 missing and presumed captured. The Union army occupied Port Gibson after losses of 131 killed, 719 wounded and 25 captured or missing.

Although the four Confederate brigades at Port Gibson held off five divisions from 1:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., James M. McPherson says in Battle Cry of Freedom that Grant's army merely "brushed them aside." Instead, no matter how unsuccessful, it was a determined stand by vastly outnumbered and poorly supplied defenders. Strategically, Port Gibson was the best location, of several opportunities, for the Confederate defenders to stop Grant's invasion because a Union defeat would have pushed Grant's army back into the river. The opportunity was lost when Pemberton delayed in ordering troops in sufficient strength to meet Grant.

Part of Pemberton's reluctance to commit troops to the defense of Port Gibson was his uncertainty about the purpose of the second prong of Grant's offensive, a cavalry raid from La Grange, Tennessee, by Col. Benjamin H. Grierson. John T. Hardie's cavalry troop was one of the many Confederate units which the raiders evaded before slipping through the lines at Baton Rouge.

Colonel Grierson left La Grange on April 17, 1863, with approximately 1700 men of the 6th and 7th Illinois cavalry and the 2nd Iowa cavalry. They headed south through the lightly defended towns of eastern Mississippi. Along the way they cut telegraph lines, destroyed bridges, and generally performed an interdiction role assumed by aircraft a few wars later. The real damage was reserved for Newton station on the Southern Railroad, twenty miles west of Meridian. There they destroyed two locomotives and 38 freight cars loaded with railroad ties, machinery, commissary stores, and ammunition including several thousand loaded artillery shells. With their objective achieved, however, their return was barred by Confederate cavalry gathering in their rear. So they pressed on to the south.

On April 26th the Union raiders headed west across the Leaf river through Raleigh, across the Pearl river at Georgetown, and on to the railroad at Hazelhurst where they destroyed artillery shells and a large quantity of commissary and quartermaster stores bound for Grand Gulf and Port Gibson.

Early on April 28th they headed west toward Union Church where they encountered part of the Mississippi cavalry under Col. Wirt Adams who had been sent to meet the Union invaders with two companies of cavalry from Port Gibson and three from Natchez. Problems of communication can only be imagined; many of the command telegraph lines had been cut, and dispatch riders were subject to capture by roaming detachments from the main force of Union marauders. Under orders from Pemberton on April 28th, John T. Hardie's battalion and two other cavalry companies under Colonel Wilbourn were sent out from Port Hudson, Louisiana, to intercept the raiders at Tangipahoa. When this force reached nearby Osyka, Mississippi, Wilbourn reported that he had just learned that the Union raiders were at Hazelhurst, and he headed for them. By then reports came in that the raiders were at Brookhaven. Late on April 28th one of Adams' company commanders reported to everyone that the raiders were heading to Natchez. All of this information was either wrong or so late as to be misleading.

Early on April 29th, as if in confirmation of the mistaken report, Grierson's raiders made a feint towards Fayette, which is half way between Natchez and Port Gibson and then returned to Brookhaven. By 8 o'clock that morning Adams figured out that the earlier report was wrong and signaled Pemberton that he was taking his small force to intercept Grierson's movement toward Baton Rouge. Meanwhile Grierson captured and destroyed a Confederate training camp at Brookhaven.

The next day the raiders moved south along the railroad through Bogue Chitto arriving at noon in Summit, Mississippi, where they reported finding "much Union sentiment." At Summit they destroyed 25 freight cars of supplies. Meanwhile, Colonel Wilbourn received dispatches that the raiders were simultaneously heading west for Natchez and east for Brookhaven. The attack on Summit was not reported until late that night.

On May 1st, as the battle at Port Gibson raged, Grierson threatened Magnolia and Osyka and then moved south along the Tickfaw river across into Louisiana. Wilbourn and the other Confederate cavalry commanders learned of Grant's landing at Port Gibson and assumed that the raiders would join that force. After moving in response to this incorrect assumption they learned of the feint towards Osyka and again took up defensive positions in the wrong location. Meanwhile, Grierson's force encountered 90 men of the 9th Louisiana partisan rangers at a bridge across the Tickfaw. Although they were outnumbered, the rangers held the bridge until the raiders opened up with artillery. After the rangers retreated, the raiders moved further south and then west to cross the Amite river after midnight.

At dawn the next day the Union raiders found the nearly empty camp of the Hughes battalion near Clinton, Louisiana. After destroying this camp they moved on to surprise the pickets of Stuart's cavalry. The commanding officer's only excuse was the fact that the advance guard had approached in civilian clothes, a tactic reported by other Confederate commanders and acknowledged by Colonel Grierson to have been used at other locations.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of May 2nd the raiders crossed the Union lines into Baton Rouge. Colonel Grierson claimed to have marched 600 miles in less than 16 days, captured and paroled 500 prisoners, killed or wounded 100 Confederate soldiers and destroyed immense amounts of stores and equipment. He also complained about how little food there was for his foragers:

Much of the country through which we passed was almost entirely destitute of forage and provisions, and it was but seldom that we obtained over one meal per day. Many of the inhabitants must undoubtedly suffer for want of the necessities of life, which have reached most fabulous prices.

In Battle Cry of Freedom James M. McPherson calls Grierson's raid "the most spectacular cavalry adventure of the war." This is surely an extravagant judgment for a war dominated by many cavalry actions. Still, the raid did have important strategic significance; it not only destroyed a large amount of the stores and supplies which might have helped repel Grant's invading army, it also drew off defenders from Port Gibson. The raiders moved largely unopposed through most of eastern Mississippi. When they arrived in the more heavily defended area of western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana they slipped by the defenders or overwhelmed small units. John T. Hardie's cavalry unit must have been especially embarrassed after the raiders reached Baton Rouge; Colonel Wilbourn's men never found their enemy but returned to find their own camp largely destroyed. However, John T. Hardie must have distinguished himself because he was promoted to second lieutenant on April 30, 1863.

General Grant's invasion and Colonel Grierson's cavalry raid in April 1863 were apparently the events which inspired the 1901 Civil War novel, The Cavalier. A year earlier, George W. Cable, author of The Cavalier, was still a civilian, standing on the levee watching the Union ships steam up the Mississippi to capture New Orleans. It wasn't until October 9, 1863, that he was enlisted as a private, probably surreptitiously in New Orleans, by Captain C. Hoover, commander of Company I of the 4th Mississippi Cavalry. Cable reported to the regiment on November 15, 1863, so he had no first hand knowledge of the raid. Cable remained on the company rolls throughout the war, but he was on special detached service in the lower counties of Mississippi, and he may have served as a messenger. He was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi, on May 10, 1865, and then again with his regiment at Gainesville, Alabama. There were several hundred men, at most, in a cavalry regiment, so it is more than likely that George Cable knew John T. Hardie, but there is little to support the Hardie family tradition that the hero of The Cavalier, Edgard Ferry-Durand, was based on John T. Hardie.

Much of The Cavalier's action revolves around a woman serving as a spy for the Confederate army. Spies could be expected to form an important part of a war in which both sides were of the same nationality and in which each side harbored many secret sympathizers of the enemy. For example, in the month before Grant's invasion of Bruinsburg, General Loring reported to his superior on the basis of "a perfectly reliable spy." For its intelligence along the Mississippi, the Confederacy relied on two companies of Scouts, under the command of Thomas and Samuel Henderson, which combined legitimate scouting in uniform with true espionage in disguise. Unfortunately very few records have survived of these units. According to John Bakeless' Spies of the Confederacy, there were about fifty men in Samuel Henderson's Scouts whose duties included hanging around the Union camps and reporting information to Pemberton in Vicksburg. Possibly Henderson's exploits served as a model for Cable's story. In any event the use of cavalrymen in civilian clothes was not limited to Grierson's Union raiders.

After defeating the rebels at Port Gibson, Grant's army marched to Jackson, Mississippi, not directly to Vicksburg. On May 12, 1863, at Raymond, about 15 miles west of Jackson, Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson's 17th U.S. Army Corps encountered a force of approximately 4000 Confederate infantry and artillery. Unable to stop the larger Union force, the Confederates withdrew leaving Union casualties of 69 dead, 341 wounded and 30 missing compared to their own casualties of 103 killed and 720 wounded and taken prisoner.

Two days later, with an infantry charge in heavy rain, the Union invaders overwhelmed a Confederate force defending Jackson. Jackson was evacuated, and the Union army destroyed as much of the city as it could before turning to the west for Vicksburg.

On May 15th Pemberton moved out of Vicksburg, gathering many of the defenders of Port Gibson, to meet the Union threat. On May 16th the Union invaders reached Edwards depot, just east of the point where the Jackson road crossed Big Black river, and found Pemberton's forces covering the road from defensive positions on Champion's hill. Union reports refer to the battle at Champion's hill as the "hardest fought battle" since the crossing at Bruinsburg, possibly because the numbers were nearer equal: 29,000 Union against 20,000 Confederates.

General Stevenson's division, especially S.D. Lee's brigade which included Taul Bradford's 30th Alabama under Col. C.M. Shelley and Robert Hardie's 31st Alabama under Lt. Col. T.M. Arrington, took the brunt of McPherson's attack which began around 10:30 in the morning. The 30th and 31st were on the far left of the Confederate line covering the road from Clinton to Edward's depot. Lee's brigade fell back slowly until about 2:30 in the afternoon when it was supported by Bowen and Cockerell's brigades. The Union attackers found the rear of the 20th and 31st Alabama around 5 p.m. when the adjoining brigade on the right was driven back. McPherson reported that his 17th Iowa infantry regiment captured the colors of the 31st Alabama in the charge which ended the battle.

Confederate defenders fell back from Champion's hill to the Big Black river and set up another defensive position about a mile in length protecting the bridge. The Union army corps under Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand took the bridge the next day after a single dramatic charge. General Pemberton reported that the retreat from Champion's hill had been orderly and that all the artillery had been withdrawn, but at the Big Black bridge the Confederate troops simply fled, leaving the artillery in the trenches.

The siege of Vicksburg began in mid-May, and Vicksburg surrendered July 4, 1863, to Grant. Port Hudson, Louisiana, capitulated five days later. The surrender of the two Confederate strongholds produced more than 30,000 captives, and Grant, rather than tie up his transport with prisoners, paroled those who offered their word not to bear arms again until formally exchanged according to agreements between the Union and Confederate governments. The 30th and 31st Alabama surrendered at the fall of Vicksburg and were paroled on July 9, 1863.

From Vicksburg the 30th and 31st Alabama marched to a parole camp at Enterprise, Mississippi, and from there they were released for fifteen days furlough, and Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie were able to return to Talladega during the furlough. After the furlough the paroled men were collected at Demopolis, Alabama, on the Tombigbee river. Meanwhile the unsuccessful commanders wrote explanations for their failure to stop Grant's Vicksburg campaign. Stevenson complained that his division had been thrown into the heaviest fighting at Champion's hill. He defended S.D. Lee's brigade, which included Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie's regiments, because they had been outnumbered by four to one, and he explained that Lee himself had lost three horses shot out from under him.

The men who retreated from Vicksburg to Demopolis must have been terribly discouraged. Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie had been part of a force which repulsed Sherman in December 1862, and they had enjoyed the security of the fortress at Vicksburg for more than four months. Grant's ingenuity in running the guns at Vicksburg left the defenders unprepared and undermanned when they moved to block Grant's invasion. The Union victory at Port Gibson, the destruction of Jackson, and the Union victories at Champion's hill and Edwards depot left a defeated group of infantrymen imprisoned in Vicksburg. The siege was not particularly brutal, as sieges go, but the starvation of mutinous soldiers was enhanced by disappointment as Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston made no effort to break through the Union line with relief.

Many commentators have observed that the fall of Vicksburg sealed the fate of the Confederacy. Combined with the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg must also have made it apparent at the time that the chances for a Confederate victory were remote. Robert Hardie was the last, and possibly the most reluctant, of the brothers to join the army. Perhaps as he and Taul Bradford waited out their parole they discussed the futility of the war.

The people of Talladega county did not universally support the war, and the primary objection seems to have been the conscription laws which had recently been extended to age forty-five. The paroled veterans who returned to Talladega from Vicksburg in the early summer of 1863 were also less than enthusiastic about the prospect of their return to the war if they were exchanged. As a consequence, the elections that summer turned out the incumbent candidate for the Confederate House of Representatives and elected an opponent of the war. Maj. W.T. Walthall, Commandant of Conscripts for Alabama wrote from Talladega to his headquarters in Richmond to warn of the situation.

The result of the recent elections in this State has developed a degree of disaffection (to use the mildest possible term) which may lead to serious mischief. In this section of the State the elections have been generally carried by an opposition known as the "Peace Party." It is scarcely necessary to remark that (as the present war on our part is a struggle for peace) if a "peace party" has any definite meaning at all it must mean what it should be treason even to suggest. In the Congressional district from which I write the present incumbent (Mr. Curry) has been defeated by a large majority, chiefly (from all I can learn) on account of his identification with the Government, and with what we have been accustomed to consider the established principles of the Confederacy.

In some counties men have been elected to the State Legislature and to other positions of public trust who were not publicly known, or scarcely known, as candidates. These results are mainly attributable, as there is every reason to believe, to a secret sworn organization known to exist and believed to have for its objects the encouragement of desertion, the protection of deserters from arrest, resistance to conscription, and perhaps other designs of a still more dangerous character.

It is perhaps still more significant that the rank and file of the paroled prisoners of the Vicksburg army, according to my information, contributed largely by their votes to the result of the election. . . . [I]nsidious efforts are making to induce the paroled men generally to refuse to return into service.

After the fall of Vicksburg, Union forces controlled the Mississippi river, but they could control only a strip of the state along the river. The headquarters of the Confederate Army of Mississippi withdrew to Meridian, Mississippi, a rail junction and major supply depot.

On June 25, 1863, John T. Hardie's Hughes battalion and several other cavalry battalions had been placed in a brigade under the command of Col. John L. Logan. After the fall of Vicksburg they were concerned primarily with containing the Union forces that were then able to operate from their secure bases along the Mississippi river.

On August 3, 1863 Logan's brigade defeated a detachment of the "Corps d'Afrique" at Jackson, Louisiana, about 25 miles north of Baton Rouge. The detachment was under the command of Union Lt. Moore Hanham who was out collecting negro recruits in an area not fully controlled by the occupying Union troops. Logan reported the loss of 12 men killed and wounded while "whipping [the Union force] handsomely, driving him from the town, capturing two Parrott guns, horses, ten wagons with commissary stores, killing, wounding and capturing not less than 100 Yankees and a large number of negroes in arms. The enemy fled in the greatest confusion, leaving his dead and wounded behind him It was a complete rout." The Union force lost 78 killed and wounded (including Hanham who was wounded), and their brigade commander reported that an otherwise orderly withdrawal became a rout when the detachment's guide was killed and the men lost their way.

The Corps d'Afrique was created on May 1, 1863, by General Nathaniel P. Banks who replaced Benjamin F. Butler as the Union commander of occupation of New Orleans. Banks explained that it was a "practical and sensible matter of business," and not the result of a belief in the equality of the colored troops. In fact, he ordered the regiments limited to 500 men instead of the usual 1000, but he kept the usual number of officers, almost all of whom were white. According to Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, Butler had already authorized Daniel Ullman to recruit negro soldiers from the escaped slaves. Ullman, who had run unsuccessfully for governor of New York in 1854, clashed with Banks over the treatment of the troops in his command, so Banks consolidated all of Ullman's colored troops with the new Corps d'Afrique. The rout at Jackson was not typical of their performance in battle. At the siege of Port Hudson they fought heroically, especially those with colored company commanders.

After the battle at Jackson, Logan wrote General Hardee, commanding the Confederate army in the West, and asked: "What disposition shall I make of negroes captured in arms?" Hardee's reply is lost, but Brig. Gen. George L. Andrews, commander of the Corps d'Afrique at Port Hudson, wrote to his headquarters:

It is reported that 1 or 2 of the colored soldiers who fell into the hands of the rebels were hung, and it is certain that some of the prisoners were severely beaten. The rebels have refused to give any information concerning the officers or men of the colored troops who are in their hands. I have sent two flags of truce to the enemy at Jackson, one to inquire about our wounded and one to demand explanations from General [Colonel] Logan with regard to the treatment of colored soldiers when prisoners of war.

To the latter I have received no reply yet, General [Colonel] Logan having left Jackson with nearly all his force, leaving only a small cavalry force in the town.

I learn that our wounded belonging to the white troops are well cared for, but I fear such is not the case with colored troops. The rebels hold an assistant surgeon of one of the colored regiments, and refuse to give any account of him. I have accordingly confined all the rebel surgeons at this post, and, while awaiting General [Colonel] Logan's answer to my demand for an explanation concerning his treatment of colored soldiers of this command, I have confined the rebel prisoners now at this post.

Logan's weak denial of the charges in a letter to Andrews asserted that "if any negroes in arms have been hung by troops of this command it was done without my knowledge, or by some one, if at all, without authority from me." Rather than precipitate a round of reprisals, General Andrews acknowledged that the bodies seen by his informants might have been men already slain in battle. In the absence of "conclusive testimony" General Banks concluded that there was no evidence on which to base retaliatory measures. Nevertheless, other similar incidents suggest that the charges could well have been true. Frustration and resentment were undoubtedly among the Confederate cavalrymen in the wake of their humiliation at the hands of Grierson and the loss of both Port Gibson and Vicksburg. It is also not certain whether John T. Hardie was present with Logan's brigade at the battle in Jackson. Confederate rosters indicate that Logan's brigade, if at full strength, would have been approximately 1300 men. On the other hand, Logan's report says that his force at Jackson consisted of only 500 men. Without identifying his source, Dunbar Rowland says that it was Hughes and Stockdale's battalions at Jackson, so it is likely that John T. Hardie was present. If so, this may have been one incident that motivated his reluctance to discuss the war after its end.

In late August 1863 John T. Hardie's battalion was specially assigned to Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow to assist in "organizing" conscripts at Georgetown and Crystal Springs, just south of Jackson, Mississippi. According to A.B. Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (1924), Pillow's conscription activities were aggressive and, consequentially, controversial. He had been appointed by Braxton Bragg to organize a volunteer and conscript recruiting bureau for Bragg's army of Tennessee. As such he was in competition with the civil, and official, Confederate conscription system. He gave his men titles that implied official sanction, and he usurped the role of the legal system in validating exemptions. He was ultimately reprimanded by the War Department and relieved of the duty in December 1863.

On September 14, 1863 the Hughes and Stockdale battalions were merged, and the unit became known as the 4th Mississippi Cavalry, still under Col. Wilbourn's command. John Hardie's Company D of Hughes Battalion became Company E of the 4th Mississippi Cavalry regiment.

In the spring of 1863 the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia began its campaigning on May 2, 1863, when Stonewall Jackson's troops rolled up the Union's right flank on the first day of a four day battle at Chancellorsville. The Confederate victory over Joseph Hooker's Union army began the route to Gettysburg, but it left William T. Hardie a prisoner of war.

While the main battle was raging in Chancellorsville, the Washington Artillery was in Fredericksburg, nine miles to the east. In his explanation of the battle, General Pendleton criticized the Washington Artillery for its delay in arriving from its camp at Chesterfield depot. Walton explained that he had been waiting for horses, the essential of artillery. When it did arrive, Walton's battalion was split; one section of the 2nd Company and one section of the 4th Company were sent under Captain Richardson to assist Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early. The remainder, including William T. Hardie's 1st Company, assumed its former place on Marye's hill to the left of the plank road which ran from the town up the hill. From this commanding position they had the power to inflict the same damage on the Union army in Fredericksburg as they had the previous December.

However, as a result of a misunderstanding, the infantry support for the position was reduced with disastrous results for William T. Hardie's 1st Company. In order to support Jackson's forces engaged in the battle at Chancellorsville, on May 2nd Lee ordered several infantry brigades at Fredericksburg to move west. This weakened the Confederate position at Fredericksburg, and Early was told that the artillery should be withdrawn if the loss of its infantry support left it in an exposed position. Pendleton took this as a directive and ordered the removal of all but eight or ten guns from Fredericksburg down the road to Chesterfield to keep them out of harm's way. The remaining guns were told to detain the Union infantry as long as they could and then retire. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon of May 2nd, all but six of the Washington Artillery guns had been withdrawn. By dusk all were gone.

Scarcely had the last piece of artillery reached the road to Chesterfield when Pendleton's misunderstanding was discovered, and all the guns were ordered to return to their previous positions. Having been the last to leave, Walton's batteries were the first to return. They reached Marye's hill at about 3 a.m. on Sunday Morning, May 3rd. Walton complained to no avail that there were insufficient infantry troops in front of the batteries and none to protect them in the rear. At sunrise William T. Hardie's company was in position on Marye's hill in front of the graveyard and to the left of Marye's house.

As in the former battle, the Union infantry stormed Marye's hill. The assault came in two columns up the plank road against the 1st Company and a line of battle against the reduced Confederate infantry. A force of 3,000 Union attackers faced less than 400 defenders. The lead column of the assault was the 61st Pennsylvania infantry under Maj. George W. Dawson, and his men swarmed behind and around the guns of the 1st Company. Four men of the 1st Company were killed, and eight were wounded.

Thirty-three were captured, including William T. Hardie, company commander C.W. Squires, and the adjutant's brother Lt. Edward Owen. Major Dawson reported to his commander that he had captured an element of the "famous Washington Artillery."

We poured canister into them from our works, and drove them back in great confusion, when, much to our astonishment, we were fired upon from the rear by the Sixth Maine, which had run over our infantry on our left, in front of Marye's House, and came in our rear while we were busy with those in our front, and took us at our posts. Our last gun was fired by Sergeant W.T. Hardie and Sumpter Turner, when six or eight Federals were trying to get into the embrasure. It blew them to atoms.

The next day Marye's hill was retaken and the entire Union army withdrew to the other side of the Rappahannock as a result of the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville. Despite the victory, the Confederates suffered substantial casualties including the death of Stonewall Jackson.

William T. Hardie was imprisoned at Fort Delaware on the Delaware river south of Wilmington. Imprisonment at Fort Delaware was by contemporary accounts a serious risk. A U.S. Army surgeon, who inspected the prisoner of war facilities in September 1863, reported:

I do not consider Fort Delaware a desirable location, in sanitary point of view, for a large depot of prisoners. The ground is wet and marshy and the locality favorable for the development of malarious diseases. There have been many deaths at this place from typhoid fever, the result of their being crowded together in large numbers in a confined space.

William T. Hardie was paroled and exchanged at City Point, Virginia, on May 23, 1863, just in time to join Lee's ambitious invasion of Pennsylvania which ended at Gettysburg on July 4, 1863.

With the death of Stonewall Jackson, Lee reorganized the Army of Northern Virginia into three corps; Richard Ewell took command of Jackson's 2nd corps and a newly created 3rd corps was placed under the command of A.P. Hill. The first corps, and the Washington Artillery, remained under the command of Longstreet.

In June 1863 Maj. Benjamin F. Eshleman, one of the original company commanders, took command of the Washington Artillery.

The battalion was ordered to begin its march north on June 14, 1863, towards Winchester, Virginia, and on June 17th it crossed the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah valley. By the 25th it had crossed the Potomac, and the 26th brought it into Pennsylvania where, on the 30th, it camped at Greenwood.

At 2 a.m. on July 2nd, the battalion left its camp and marched for Gettysburg. At 8 a.m. they were placed in reserve on Seminary ridge where they waited until 7 p.m. Then they were moved to the front line on the far right; the 1st Company was the farthest artillery battery on the right along Emmittsburg Road, to the left of the peach orchard and across from Little Round Top. Sergeant W.T. Hardie was the commander of the gun on the end of the line in a section of two guns under the command of Lt. Charles H.C. Brown.

On July 3rd the Battalion's guns started an artillery duel. Lt. Brown wrote in his report:

It was assigned to me to fire the two signal-guns for the artillery duel. My right gun, under W.T. Hardie, was directed by him on a battery directly opposite our position, and, at a distance of from eight hundred to a thousand yards, exploded a caisson.

The second gun, under Sergt. P.O. Fazende, fired at the same battery and exploded another. The gunners had not compared the distance, range or elevation. Of course the battery gave no further trouble in the action that followed.

When Pickett's division advanced, our firing ceased. Seeing I could be of no further use in the position I was in, I advanced my guns to the open field in front of the right flank of Pickett's division to within three hundred yards of the enemy's lines, being enabled from my position to enfilade their entire line where I knew my guns did most excellent service.

After Pickett's charge was repulsed, the guns continued firing to discourage a counterattack by the Union army. Brown was wounded and left in the hands of the Union army when the two guns fell back with Pickett.

The next afternoon, with ammunition exhausted and little fighting in progress, the Washington Artillery retired from the field and accompanied a wagon train to Williamsport. It was not until the 10th that their ammunition was restored, and on the 13th they escaped back across the Potomac. By the 5th of August they were back in their camp at Orange Court House, south of the Rappahannock.

While Grant was besieging Vicksburg and Hooker was unsuccessfully attacking at Chancellorsville, the Confederate army of Tennessee remained unmolested at Shelbyville until June 1863.

While the 8th Confederate cavalry was in Tennessee, James White Hardie's wife, Francina Bradford Hardie, died at Black Creek Falls in Cherokee County, Alabama, on June 13, 1863. She was survived by two small children born to her and James in the years just before the war. We don't know whether James Hardie was with his wife at her death or, if he was not, how he learned of it. It is safe to assume that however he learned of it, he was deeply saddened to lose his second wife without any means to care for their children. For James at the time, the war must have been a bitter frustration.

On June 24, 1863, Rosecrans renewed his attack on Bragg's army and achieved quick success as Bragg fell back to Chattanooga in early July without putting up a fight. Knoxville was captured on September 3rd, and Chattanooga was evacuated on September 8th. Bragg took up defensive positions in northern Georgia along the railroad line which ran north through Dalton, Georgia.

In August 1863, the 51st Alabama cavalry and the 8th Confederate cavalry were two of four regiments in Col. John T. Morgan's brigade in Wheeler's cavalry corps. The 51st was under the command of Lt. Col. Miles L. Kirkpatrick, and the 8th was under the command of Lt. Col. John T. Prather.

Towards the end of August most of the brigade, including Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama cavalry and James Hardie's 8th Confederate cavalry, was in Alabama, and on August 27th it was ordered to Trenton, Georgia, in the extreme northeast corner of the state. From there it guarded the left flank of the Confederate army by picketing the passes over Lookout mountain between the Tennessee river and Neal's gap. For two weeks the 51st and the 8th skirmished with the Union cavalry as Rosecrans' army advanced from Chattanooga into Georgia.

On September 18th the 51st Alabama and the 8th Confederate cavalry moved to Owen's ford on Chickamauga creek leaving pickets at the gaps all along Lookout mountain as far as Gadsden, Alabama. On the 19th, as the battle raged at Chickamauga creek, Wheeler's men captured Union wagons, ambulances and "over 100 surgeons." Two days later they captured more supplies, wagons and mules from the retreating Union army.

Also on September 18, 1863, the first of Longstreet's army began to arrive from Virginia at the railroad station at Dalton, Georgia. Two of Longstreet's three divisions in Virginia had been shifted to Georgia to augment Braxton Bragg's army, but transportation was impeded by the fact that railroads in Virginia and North Carolina were of a different gauge than the railroads in South Carolina and Georgia. About half of Longstreet's men arrived in time to participate in the battle of Chickamauga on September 19, 1863.

Elements of the opposing armies encountered each other just west of Chickamauga creek on the 19th. The battle began on the Confederate right, and Longstreet himself took command of the Confederate left as it charged into a newly vacated gap in the Union line. Only a last-ditch stand by the Union remnants prevented a complete destruction of Rosecrans' army.

The results of the operations of the cavalry under my command during the battle of Chickamauga were, first, guarding the left flank of the army for a distance of 90 miles during and for twenty days preceding the battle of Chickamauga, during which time it continually observed and skirmished with the enemy, repelling and developing all his diversions. During the battle, with the available forces (which never exceeded 2,000 men) not on other duty (such as guarding the flanks), we fought the enemy vigorously and successfully, killing and wounding large numbers, and capturing 2,000 prisoners, 100 wagons and teams, a large amount of other property, and 18 stand of colors, all of which were turned over to the proper authorities.

The capture of the colors of the Union companies demonstrates the veracity of a report which might otherwise be dismissed as typical exaggeration.

Although the Confederate army failed to follow up on its victory at Chickamauga with any strategic gains, Joseph Wheeler's cavalry conducted raids north of Chattanooga.

On September 12, 1863, Robert Ould, the Confederate "Agent of Exchange" declared that a number of the Confederate soldiers paroled at Vicksburg were "exchanged." Among the exchanged units was C.L. Stevenson's division, including Robert Hardie's 31st Alabama and Taul Bradford's 30th Alabama. The exchange of the Vicksburg veterans created a storm of controversy which continued until the end of the war.

When the war began both the Union and Confederate armies were as ill-prepared for prisoners of war as they were for the rest of the conflict. After the first battle of Manassas it was assumed by both sides that prisoners of war would be exchanged, and for several months agents of both governments met to work out the details. These discussions also resulted in a system of paroles for prisoners taken in future battles. In February 1862, while the armies in Virginia were quiet and Grant was just beginning his campaign in the west, the agreement between Great Britain and the United States during the war of 1812 was used as the basis for exchange. The 1812 agreement proved unsatisfactory for paroles, so after meeting for a week, Maj. Gen. John A. Dix for the Union and Maj. Gen. Daniel H. Hill for the Confederacy worked out a new agreement on July 22, 1862. It was published to all commands on September 25, 1862. Judge Robert Ould served as agent of exchange for the Confederate army for the remainder of the war, and the Union army assigned the duty to a series of generals.

The primary purpose of the Dix-Hall cartel, as it was called, was to insure that all prisoners of war would be released within ten days of their capture; those who could not be immediately exchanged for their equivalent in rank were to be paroled and returned to their own army. The agreement also established a revealing table of equivalence among officers and men: a major general was equivalent to forty privates while a non-commissioned officer was worth two privates.

The parole itself was an oath that the parolee would not take up arms again until properly exchanged. The exchange of paroled men was somewhat more complicated than the exchange of real prisoners. The language of the agreement is obscure, but evidently each army could declare a number of its own parolees exchanged while at the same time delivering a list of the discharged men of the other army so it could declare its own men released from their paroles. Paroled men were supposed to be kept in parole camps until exchanged, or they could return to their homes where they were not allowed to participate in "public affairs or to enter upon business pursuits." In all respects they were to be considered prisoners of war, but the cost of maintaining them was shifted by the system to their own army.

Two locations, Vicksburg in the west and City Point, Virginia, on the James river in the east, were selected as the official points of exchange, but commanders of opposing armies were permitted to agree on other sites.

While the system was initially successful in reducing the burden on both sides of maintaining prisoners of war, it did have its inherent problems. Relieved of any obligation to work or serve in the military, the life of a parolee was not hard. The Confederacy found that some of its officers and men intentionally permitted themselves to be captured and paroled. Both governments found it difficult to entice the parolees back to the war after they had been exchanged. Moreover, the language of the cartel itself invited misunderstanding. As any lawyer can attest, it is difficult at best to obtain agreement among adversaries, so the cartel provided that the prisoner exchange should continue notwithstanding disagreement which should be resolved by "friendly explanations."

It may seem quaint in today's atmosphere of moral relevancy, but the oath of parole seemed to work. There were exceptions, and parole violators were not uncommon. There were sanctions as well, and in theory they were extreme. The Dix-Hill cartel contained no sanctions, but its model, the 1812 agreement, provided that parole violators would be punished according to "custom and usage observed in such cases by the most civilized nation when at war." On August 15, 1862, just before the battle of second Manassas, the Union government announced that all persons violating parole would be "punished according to the laws and usages of war." Perhaps this explanation was satisfactory to its declarant, but in an army composed largely of citizen volunteers and conscripts, it invited disputes. In order to establish the rules of war for both sides, a New York lawyer, Francis Lieber, LL.D., supervised by a board of Union officers, prepared what might properly be called articles of war. These articles, which were published on April 24, 1863, and delivered to the Confederate government, eliminated all doubt:

124. Breaking parole is punishable by death when the person breaking the parole is captured again. Accurate lists, therefore, of the paroled persons must be kept by the belligerents.

The threat seems to have been effective. For example, according to the obituary in the April 22, 1910, issue of the New York Times, Samuel Clemens was a Confederate soldier who was captured and paroled. He then broke his parole to return to the ranks, and he was captured again. In order to avoid his possible execution he fled to Nevada where he took up journalism under the pseudonym, “Mark Twain.”

The Confederates encountered difficulty transporting Union prisoners to the two exchange points; the limited personnel available to serve as guards and the loss of key rail lines led the Confederate commanders to shunt their prisoners back through the lines where they were captured. The Union agent of exchange complained that this practice created uncertainty over the lists of exchanged prisoners.

The first serious problem, however, arose out of the exchange of former slaves who were captured while serving in the Union army. The Confederates often returned them to their former masters or simply sold them anew. The Union General-in-chief, H.W. Halleck, insisted that negro officers and men be treated the same as whites. When the Confederacy refused to agree, Halleck ordered on December 30, 1862, that no further Confederate officers be paroled; they would be held, in effect, as hostages to insure proper treatment of all prisoners of war. In May 1863 the Union government halted all exchanges over the issue.

Nevertheless, faced with 30,000 captives from Vicksburg and 7,000 more from Port Hudson in July 1863, Grant paroled them all, both officers and men. The Vicksburg parolees were in camp at Demopolis, Alabama, and Enterprise, Mississippi. Such a large number of experienced men must have been a great temptation to the Confederate army, so it might be expected that the Confederacy would bend the rules to have these men declared exchanged.

On September 11, 1863, Judge Ould informed the Union exchange agent that on the next day he would declare approximately 16,000 men captured at Vicksburg to be exchanged; among them were the 30th and 31st Alabama infantry regiments which included Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie. The basis of the exchange was "more valid paroles of your officers and men [in my possession] than would be an equivalent for the officers and men herein enumerated." In fact the men were not listed individually but merely identified by unit and place of capture. Halleck immediately wrote Grant that the exchange was invalid but that Grant must expect the armies opposing him to be increased by these men.

While Ould and his Union counterpart kept up a furious correspondence, the 30th and 31st Alabama moved to the Chattanooga area to assist in the encirclement which followed Chickamauga. In an effort to prevent the use of the Vicksburg parolees, Union general James B. McPherson ordered their arrest, an action actually carried out on some of the parolees living peaceably in their homes but obviously ineffectual against those regiments which had returned to the field.

Evidently the men were not secure in their status as exchanged parolees. On December 11, 1863, General Polk telegraphed from the parole camp at Enterprise, Mississippi, to Judge Ould to ask "whether these men were actually exchanged by the two Governments consenting or only declared exchanged by the Confederate Government on some construction of its rights in the existing condition of the rights of exchanges?" The next day a dispatch reached Polk saying that Grant had captured some of the Vicksburg parolees at Chattanooga and was seeking guidance from Washington whether they should be treated as parole violators. Polk immediately sent another inquiry to Ould: "Can there be any doubt of the Federal Government recognizing that declaration of exchange?" Ould replied that he was sending the lists and added: "I hope none of the soldiers will have any reluctance in returning to duty." Consequently Polk issued a circular to his men explaining the situation and stating: "The action of our Government therefore is in strict conformity with law, and is binding, not only upon its officers and men, but also upon the Government of the United States."

The Union commanders were also interested in the issue of the Vicksburg paroles. General Banks in New Orleans wrote on January 2, 1864, to headquarters in Washington:

It is a question of great importance to this department, one person being held already under sentence of death by the provost court in this city for being found in arms against the United States after having been paroled at Port Hudson, he pleading to have been returned to duty by virtue of orders from Richmond.

The Union Secretary of War replied with leniency to a similar question from Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas in Chattanooga: "[You] should protect those prisoners from being proceeded against for breach of parole when taken again." It is not clear, however, whether the Confederate soldiers learned of this Union leniency. In February 1865 Ould was still arguing with the Union exchange agent that the Confederate government was acting in accordance with the "just and true construction" of the cartel when it declared the men exchanged.

After its defeat at Chickamauga, the Union army retreated to Chattanooga. Grant was placed in command of a newly created Division of the Mississippi, and he placed his headquarters at Chattanooga. George H. Thomas replaced Rosecrans as commander of the U.S. Army of the Cumberland, and W.T. Sherman was moved to Chattanooga with elements of the Army of the Tennessee. Joseph Hooker was also brought in from Virginia with elements of the Army of the Potomac.

After the fall of Vicksburg Robert Hardie was commanding officer of Company I, known as the "Alabama rifles," comprised solely of men from Talladega county. Until the exchange Robert Hardie and Taul Bradford had remained in their parole camp at Demopolis, Alabama. After the exchange, Stevenson's division which included the 30th and 31st returned to Bragg's army, then surrounding Chattanooga. Stevenson's division, and Brig. Gen. Edward C. Walthall's brigade of Hindman's division were located on Lookout mountain covering ten miles of its ridge line up to the northeast point where the ridge affords a commanding position overlooking Chattanooga. The 30th and 31st Alabama regiments were part of a brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. Edmund W. Pettus.

On November 24, 1863, three Union divisions under Joseph Hooker assaulted Lookout mountain in "The Battle Above the Clouds." At 10 a.m. the Union infantry crossed Lookout creek and worked around the flank and into the rear of Walthall's men. The 31st Alabama with part of Pettus' brigade was moved at 1 p.m. to help Walthall. They fought in fog so heavy "it was almost impossible to distinguish any object at the distance of 100 yards," according to Pettus. The 30th Alabama remained in a position southwest of Walthall from which it could fire into the flank of the attackers. They held their position until 8 p.m. when they were relieved and sent down the mountain to the east of Chattanooga creek. During the early morning of November 25th Stevenson's division moved to the extreme right of the Confederate line, above the East Tennessee & Georgia RR tunnel under Missionary ridge.

On the afternoon of November 20th four divisions of Union infantry under George H. Thomas assaulted the center of Missionary ridge, and the Confederates broke and ran. From their position, Stevenson's division with Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie skirmished from daylight until an hour before sunset when they were moved toward the collapsing center. From there they joined the general retreat as Bragg led his army to its winter quarters at Dalton, Georgia.

Although they had both been in the Chattanooga area in late October 1863, neither Alva Hardie nor James Hardie was at Missionary ridge. While the rest of the army of Tennessee was trying to starve the Union army out of Chattanooga, on November 4, 1863, Longstreet was detached from the force and ordered to retake Knoxville. James Hardie's 8th Confederate cavalry and Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama cavalry were part of Wheeler's cavalry on the Knoxville campaign.

Wheeler and Longstreet linked up on November 11, 1863, at Sweet Water, Tennessee. Wheeler was directed to capture a Union defensive position at Maryville, near Knoxville, which he did on November 13th, but he could not take any of the heights which commanded the town. At Stock creek on the 16th Wheeler and his men fought a strong force of Union cavalry which they drove back to within half a mile of the river opposite the city. >From there Wheeler was ordered back to support Longstreet's main force. On the 24th of November Wheeler's attack on a smaller body of Union cavalry at Kingston was unsuccessful, much to Longstreet's dismay. Then Wheeler himself was ordered back to Chattanooga by Bragg, and Martin assumed command of the cavalry detachment.

Longstreet made several unsuccessful attacks of his own at Knoxville on November 29, 1863, but his columns were broken up by the defenders within 500 yards of their fortifications. According to Longstreet, within a half hour of the repulse he received a message from Bragg that Bragg had been forced back from Missionary ridge and needed Longstreet's troops. Longstreet determined that it was not safe to return, so on December 1st he abandoned the siege of Knoxville and headed northeast toward Virginia.

The 51st Alabama and the 8th Confederate accompanied Longstreet as far as Rogersville on the Holston river. They successfully resisted attacks on December 20th at Russellville and on the 24th near Morristown, but suffered losses in both encounters. While Longstreet's army moved into winter quarters at Greeneville, Tennessee, Alva and James Hardie returned with the rest of the cavalry on December 29th to Dalton, Georgia, where the Confederate army of Tennessee had been established its new headquarters.

Maj. Gen. Robert Ransom, Jr. commanded one of the Confederate cavalry elements supporting Longstreet, and after the Knoxville campaign he wrote to J.A. Seddon, the C.S.A. Secretary of War, to complain that the partisan rangers were the "most trifling troops we have;" when goods are captured by the cavalry, they "spirit it away for speculation." In addition to the 51st Alabama, there were two regiments of Georgia partisan rangers in Wheeler's cavalry during the Knoxville campaign. Ransom was not alone in his criticism of the partisan rangers; Robert E. Lee recommended that the law be repealed. Many of the units, like the 51st Alabama, were already attached to regular units, but on February 16, 1864, the Confederate Congress absorbed them all into the regular army.

After the fall of Vicksburg, the cavalry in Mississippi covered the Union troops in Vicksburg and skirmished with the various Union efforts to conduct reconnaissance forays of their own. In October 1863 the brigade which included John T. Hardie's battalion fought on Bogue Chitto near Brownsville on the 16th and again the next day near Livingston. They fought again near Natchez in December.

On November 2, 1863, while John T. Hardie was stationed at Monticello, Mississippi (on the Pearl river, about 20 miles east of Brookhaven), he wrote to Joseph E. Johnston's assistant adjutant general, Col. Benjamin S. Ewell, to request thirty days leave:

I have recently learned of the death of one of my children and that another was very ill; under those circumstances and for the additional purpose of obtaining my winter clothing I should like to obtain leave of absence for thirty days to visit my family in Macon County Alabama.

The request was endorsed with the approval of the company commander, Capt. G.D. Ramsey, who commented that it would take fourteen days for him to travel both directions of the trip. The request was also approved by Col. Wilbourn, but by the time it reached brigade headquarters it was approved for only 25 days.

John T. Hardie's daughter Ann Eliza died in Tuskegee on September 13, 1863. John T. Hardie was undoubtedly referring to her in his request for leave, but the identity of the other child is unknown. Another daughter, whose name is not known, was also born during the Civil War years and died shortly after birth; perhaps his reference is to this child.

John T. Hardie's request is silent about the mode of travel to Macon County. On today's highways the distance from Monticello, Mississippi, to Tuskegee, Alabama, is about 325 miles. It would have been very difficult for a man on horseback to travel 50 miles a day, so Captain Ramsey's estimate of seven days probably did not contemplate such a trip.

The more likely alternative would have been a trip by rail. A line ran through Brookhaven north to Jackson, Mississippi, where a connection could be made with a line through Meridian to Choctaw Bluff on the Tombigbee river in Alabama. From there a ferry crossed to the Demopolis-Selma line, and stern wheel steamboats connected Selma with Montgomery. There was even a short branch which connected Tuskegee to the Montgomery-Atlanta line.

Railroad travel was notoriously slow; the trip from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, for example, took a full day. According to Robert C. Black III, Railroads of the Confederacy (1952), railroads in the South averaged about 15 miles per hour including stops, and fares averaged about 4.5 cents a mile. Each rail line used its own time system, so connections were uncertain. Civilian traffic was subject to interruption at any time in deference to the movement of troops or war matériel. Therefore, seven days may well have been an accurate estimate of the rail trip from Monticello to Tuskegee.

However he traveled, John T. Hardie would surely have seen much of the same deprivation that Grierson reported after his cavalry raid through Mississippi the previous spring. But the Black Belt of Alabama may have appeared prosperous; the cotton plantations still supported large slave populations, and the land was untouched by the war.

As 1863 drew to a close, Robert Hardie, possibly Taul Bradford, James Hardie, and Alva Hardie were with the Army of the Tennessee in its winter quarters near Dalton, Georgia. Joseph Hardie was in Talladega with his cavalry battalion, and John T. Hardie was on furlough. Although two of Longstreet's three divisions had been shifted to Georgia to augment Braxton Bragg's army at Chickamauga, the Washington Artillery was diverted to defend Petersburg, Virginia, where William T. Hardie found himself as 1863 ended.

In March 1864 Grant was named commander in chief of the Union armies, and he placed his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac. From there he directed the Union army to cross the Rapidan river on yet another march to Richmond. Longstreet returned from Tennessee to join Lee in response to this expected spring offensive.

The armies fought in the "wilderness" south of the Rapidan from May 5th until May 12th when the Confederate armies took up defensive positions at Spotsylvania. After an especially bloody onslaught by Union troops, Lee again fell back step-by-step to within nine miles of Richmond. The armies met again at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, but the Union assault could not overrun the intricate zigzag trenches of the Confederate defenders. After abandoning the assault, Grant ordered the army to go around Richmond to Petersburg. By the end of June these maneuvers left Petersburg under siege and Richmond nearly cut off. Nevertheless, both cities remained in Confederate hands until April 1865.

While Lee's army was fighting in the Wilderness and at Cold Harbor, the Washington Artillery, under the command of Lt. Col. Eshleman, was operating south of the James river under General P.G.T. Beauregard. William T. Hardie was still with the 1st Company.

The Union army had remained on the peninsula after McClellan left in August 1862, and in the spring of 1864 this Army of the James was in command of General Benjamin F. Butler, author of the infamous "Women's Order" in occupied New Orleans. Contemporaneously with Grant's crossing of the Rapidan, Butler was supposed to steam up the James and land midway between Petersburg and Richmond. The Confederate forces attacked him at Drewry's Bluff on May 16th and drove him back into a neck between the James and Appomattox rivers.

William T. Hardie's 1st Company was under the command of Edward Owen, now a Captain, when it left its camp at Model farm near Petersburg on May 5, 1864, to oppose Butler's advance. All four companies were placed on the eastern fortifications of Petersburg with the 1st Company covering Prince George and Jordan Point roads. On the next day Captain Owen's guns were moved across Appomattox river to a position on the road guarding Swift creek bridge. During the 8th and 9th of May there was general skirmishing along the line of Swift creek, and on May 12th each company was attached temporarily to an infantry brigade for the march to Drewry's Bluff. The 1st company joined General Corse's brigade.

On May 12th the 1st company fired 86 rounds on the turnpike at Half-Way House. The next day they fired on the Union troops trying to turn their right flank. On the 14th they moved to Gregory's Crossing where they remained until the 16th. At daylight on the 16th they moved down the turnpike in dense fog under heavy rifle fire from union infantry to their first line of defensive fortifications. The company's fire disabled several Union guns and resulted in the capture of a Union battery which was awarded to the 1st Company for its bravery. Owen was struck by a Minié ball and sent from the field. After exhausting its ammunition, the 1st Company retired from the field. Four members of the company were killed at Drewry's Bluff, eleven were wounded, and ten horses were killed or disabled. Lieutenant Brown assumed command when both Captain Owen and Lieutenant Galbraith were wounded. On May 21st William T. Hardie's company returned to its camp near Petersburg. The 1st Company received special praise for holding its position under heavy infantry fire, and Sergeant William T. Hardie, among others, was cited for conspicuous gallantry in the action.

The Washington Artillery remained at Petersburg during the siege until it fell in April 1865. It is not clear that William T. Hardie remained there the entire time; Confederate veterans records show him absent on sick furlough in January and February 1865. Richmond and Petersburg were under siege, but not totally encircled. It is possible that William T. Hardie was away from Petersburg, but unlikely. More likely he was simply away from his post.

In March 1865 the Washington Artillery was busy building new redoubts in Petersburg, but by April 2nd the lines in front of Petersburg were broken and part of the 1st Company was captured. What was left of the Washington Artillery joined the general retreat. Although Lee surrendered his army on April 9, 1865, at the McLean house in Appomattox Court House, William T. Hardie continued south, possibly as part of the Washington Artillery detail escorting Jefferson Davis. In any event, William T. Hardie did not surrender until the general surrender of Johnston's army at Greensboro, North Carolina, on May 2, 1865.

John T. Hardie's return to Mississippi when his furlough expired in January 1864 must have been a grim trip. He and Ann Eliza had lost two of their children in the last year, and her existence in Tuskegee must have suffered from the general deprivation in the war-ravaged South.

The war itself had largely passed southwest Mississippi by after the fall of Vicksburg the previous summer. Union control of the forts along the Mississippi denied the river to the Confederacy. Still, the Confederate cavalry in Mississippi was a threat. Together with Nathan Bedford Forrest's corps in Tennessee, the Mississippi cavalry could disrupt Union efforts to move troops and matériel. This situation brought John T. Hardie's regiment further action after he returned from his leave.

The Union forces at Vicksburg and elsewhere along the river were uneasy with the growing concentration of Confederate forces at Meridian. Moreover, the Confederate cavalry restricted Union troop movements overland. According to Sherman, Wirt Adams' brigade, which included John T. Hardie's 4th Mississippi cavalry, was arrayed in a semicircle around Vicksburg. To break this hold and to destroy the railroads at Meridian, Sherman moved west from Vicksburg toward Meridian in early February 1864. The 4th Mississippi cavalry blocked the Union line of march near Champion's hill on February 4, 1864. Despite a gallant stand, its entire brigade was forced to fall back to Baker's creek where the cavalry made another stubborn stand on February 5th. Nevertheless, Adams' cavalry brigade failed to stop this massive movement of Union troops, and Adams assigned the 4th Mississippi to serve as a rear guard while the rest of his brigade retreated. As a result, the 4th Mississippi took a beating from Union artillery, especially grape shot at close range. Adams reported that the 4th Mississippi suffered 129 men killed or wounded.

After destroying the railroad from Jackson to Meridian, Sherman easily overran Meridian on February 14, 1864, and Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk moved his command to Demopolis, Alabama. Sherman remained in Meridian until February 20th to be sure no usable supplies remained and then returned to Vicksburg on March 4th.

In May 1864 the 4th Mississippi cavalry again faced a Union sally out of Vicksburg heading for the northeast. On May 5th and 6th the 4th Mississippi cavalry fought skirmishes, and on May 7th they retreated before the entire Union force after repulsing several determined Union cavalry charges. Fighting continued for several days until the Union force turned back toward Vicksburg on the 15th. The last battle of this campaign occurred on the 18th at Mechanicsburg.

In July 1864, while Sherman was threatening Atlanta, the entire brigade, including John T. Hardie's regiment, joined forces with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest to strike at a Union force moving from Pontotoc to Tupelo, Mississippi. On July 14th the Confederate cavalry assaulted the Union troops on that road near Harrisburg. The men fought dismounted, and encountered concentrated musket fire across an open cornfield. The fighting was heavy, and the regiment lost 13 killed and 39 wounded. As 1864 drew to a close, the 4th Mississippi remained in Forrest's cavalry division.

Sometime before the spring of 1864 Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie resigned their commissions and returned to Talladega. It is not clear why these two Confederate soldiers returned home.

One source indicates that Taul Bradford resigned on 10 November 1862. Perhaps Taul Bradford's tuberculosis made it impossible for him to continue to fight.

The history of the 31st Alabama infantry regiment on file in the Alabama State Department of Archives and History says that Robert Hardie resigned pursuant to Special Order No. 295 of the Adjutant & Inspector General's Office of the Confederate Secretary of War issued on December 12, 1863, but the Order remains unconfirmed. Perhaps the uncertainty of his status as a paroled prisoner made Robert Hardie unwilling to carry on a fight he had been reluctant to join in the first place.

A possible explanation may be found in two other factors. The first was a change in the conscription laws, and the second was an increased threat to Talladega.

Officers always had the right to resign their commissions, but they would become subject to immediate conscription. Evidently such resignations were common because the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General's Office found it necessary to publish frequent reminders that the conscription laws applied to officers who resigned. A change in the exemptions from conscription may have made it possible for Taul Bradford and Robert Hardie to resign without fear of immediate conscription.

Conscription had always been controversial in the Confederacy, and there was a continuing fear that the slaves might rise if there were not sufficient men at home to oversee them. The Emancipation Proclamation and the use of black soldiers in the Union army heightened the fear. Thus, there were exemptions of one sort or another for overseers. On February 17, 1864, the Confederate congress approved a new conscription law; it reduced from twenty to fifteen the number of slaves necessary to create the exemption and liberalized the categories of farms for which the exemption applied. Under prior conscription laws there was some doubt whether the protected farms were actually producing sufficient surplus to justify the exemption, so the new exemption was conditioned on the farm's production of a minimum amount of goods for the Confederate commissary.

The situation in Talladega may also have made it necessary to return. In April 1864 Joseph Hardie, Taul Bradford and seven other "gentlemen of the highest character" of Talladega County, petitioned Alabama Governor Thomas H. Watts, evidently in response to problems related to the year's planting, for relief from an order impressing negro slaves to work on the fortifications at Mobile.

At the time, Talladega County was in a difficult, although perhaps not unique, position. According to the petition, all of Alabama to the north was sterile and destitute as a result of the war, and refugees found the Talladega valley to be the first haven as they fled south. Moreover, the county had raised twenty-seven companies of volunteers for the war together with a pledge of $20,000 a year to aid the nearly 4,000 people whose means of support had volunteered. The pledges were met partly by cash but mostly in kind by wheat, corn, and salt. Additionally, they said, they were supporting several thousand cavalry and artillery horses and mules. Seven hundred of the county's 8,900 slaves plus horses, mules and oxen, had already been impressed by the time these planters made their plea to keep their slaves for the spring planting and fall harvest. Governor Watts forwarded this request on to General Polk at Demopolis, Alabama, with his own request that "if relief can be granted it ought to be done." General Polk's response is lost, but, in any event, Mobile fell to Admiral Farragut in August 1864 so the work on the fortifications would have ended.

On his earlier return to Talladega in 1862, Joseph Hardie organized Hardie's Battalion of Alabama Cavalry Reserves with six or seven companies, and he assumed the rank of captain and served as the commanding officer. He was later promoted to Major. Among the members of Hardie's Battalion were E.H. Bradford and Phil Bradford, both privates in Company C. Also in the Talladega area at the time was a new company of cavalry which Andrew Bowie had raised when he resigned in May 1862 from his original company. Bowie's rangers were engaged in conscription service. Talladega was a Post under the command of Major W.T. Walthall within the C.S.A. Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, and it was the location of a "camp of instruction." There were about twenty such posts throughout Alabama and Mississippi. Brig. Gen. Daniel W. Adams was commander of the district, but Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow had command of all the C.S.A cavalry in north Alabama. Hardie's Battalion was on outpost duty in St. Claire, Calhoun, Cherokee and Talladega Counties.

Joseph E. Johnston gave up his command in the Mississippi theater to Leonidas Polk and left for Dalton, Georgia, where, on December 27, 1863, he assumed command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee from Bragg. Its winter quarters stretched from Knoxville to Huntsville, Alabama, with outposts as far west as Talladega.

On March 9, 1864, Grant was placed in Command of the entire Union army. Sherman replaced Grant as commander of the Military Division of Mississippi while Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson became commander of the Army of the Tennessee. At a meeting on March 20, 1864, in Cincinnati, Grant and Sherman decided on a combined offensive; Grant was to direct the attack on Richmond while Sherman was to take Atlanta because it was an important strategic target in the middle of the rail network which supplied all that was left of the Confederacy. Sherman's campaign to take Atlanta is described in detail in Decision in the West by Albert Castel, published in 1992.

Sherman's share of the concurrent offensives was a three pronged attack. Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, in command of the army of the Ohio at Knoxville was to attack from the northeast. McPherson, in command of the army of the Tennessee at Huntsville, Alabama, was to attack from Decatur, Alabama, to Lafayette, Georgia, and then to Dalton or Rome, depending on the Confederate reaction. The third element of Sherman's offensive was to be an attack by the army of the Cumberland with 73,000 men under Thomas from Chattanooga directly towards Johnston's army at Dalton. Against this Union army of 111,000 men, Johnston presented a scant 40,000 men in March 1864.

Leonidas Polk and Lieut. Gen. John B. Hood moved toward Rome, Georgia, in early May 1864 with almost all of the infantry and half of the cavalry in Mississippi, Alabama and Eastern Louisiana. This raised the total Confederate forces to nearly 70,000 men.

Sherman's Atlanta campaign began on May 1, 1864, against Dalton, Georgia. The first obstruction to the Union attack was the Rocky Face ridge of the Cumberland mountains.

As the Union army approached Dalton, Wheeler's cavalry ranged up and down the valleys and ridge lines between Dalton and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Howard's IV Corps of the Union army moved south from Cleveland, Tennessee, into Georgia at Red Clay on the East Tennessee & Georgia RR fifteen miles north of Dalton. On May 6th part of Wheeler's force formed a skirmish line near Tunnel hill, supported by two regiments of infantry. The next day they drove back the Union attack on Tunnel hill. On May 8th Kelly's brigade of cavalry and other elements of Wheeler's cavalry corps resisted the advance south on the Red Clay road from Varnell Station by McCook's division of Union cavalry.

Alva Hardie and the rest of the 51st Alabama cavalry were supplied with carbines shortly before the Atlanta campaign began. These weapons had a longer range than pistols and shotguns and gave the men the capacity to fight infantry. As a result, they were deployed dismounted at the north end of the Rocky Face ridge with infantry support across the Red Clay road. On May 9th McCook's division again advanced down the Red Clay road toward Rocky Face. The 51st Alabama and other regiments of Allen's brigade charged on foot, while the 8th Texas and 8th Confederate with James W. Hardie charged mounted. This charge routed McCook's cavalry with heavy losses, but James Hardie was so severely injured in the course of the action that he was unable to return to his company for the rest of the war. The 8th Confederate history written by George Knox Miller, on file at the State of Alabama Department of Archives and History, describes the action:

Arriving near a cottage, on the left of the road, we found our skirmishers dismounted, their line extending to the right and left at right angles to the road. That portion on the right of the road in the edge of a wood with half mile or more of open field in its front filled with line after line of blue coated Federal cavalry; that portion on the left of the road was in open woods endeavoring to hold a ridge that extended Westward from and at right angles to the road. Half way up this ridge in their front was a heavy line of dismounted Federal skirmishers; at the foot of the ridge was a still heavier line of Federal cavalry, and, at the top of the next ridge, back of them, still another line, and back of all, the held horses of the enemy. By proper order Col. Prather put the 8th in line to the front on the left of the road, and, as the 8th cleared the road, the Texas brigade, pistols in hand and in a column of fours, swept up the road charging in column. Simultaneously, the 8th Confederate, pistols in hand passed in a gallop through our skirmishers and charged down the ridge with a wild yell, rode over the first line of the enemy, then, firing at close quarters, dashed on to the second line and crushed it, killing some, wounding others and capturing nearly all of the second line. The quick charge, the brief fight with pistols against both guns and pistols, the capture of prisoners, the casualties in our own ranks in both men and horses and whirlwind of hand-to-hand battle disconcerted the splendid alignment, with which we threw ourselves upon the enemy, and the line became ragged and, for the time being, somewhat disorganized. [Company A] was near the left of the regimental line in the charge . . . . Orderly Sergeant James W. Hardie, of the same Company was grievously wounded, while some three other men together with several horses were wounded.

A second charge up the ridge dislodged the remaining Union cavalry who fled the field leaving equipment in "wild disorder."

The 8th Confederate's charge prevented the Union cavalry from overrunning the dismounted 51st Alabama, so James Hardie may have consoled himself that his wounds were a small price to pay for preventing the capture, or possible death, of his brother. When the charge began, James certainly knew his brother was among the troopers on the ground in the field before him. And Alva must have seen the colors of his brother's regiment as the 8th Confederate swept by him. So, as the Union fled the field, he must surely have been on feet at once to find his wounded brother and help him from the field. We don't know what the wounds were, but they probably did not involve any broken limbs which would normally have resulted in amputation. In any event, they were serious enough to send him home for the rest of the war.

Ultimately Tunnel hill and Rocky Face ridge were abandoned, and the 51st Alabama was sent to Resaca with Allen's brigade on May 11th.

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston withdrew his army from Dalton to Resaca, Georgia, on May 14, 1864, and two days later he again withdrew. Resaca is located where the wagon and rail bridges crossed a northward bending loop of the Oostanaula river. Wheeler's cavalry, stationed on the south side of the Oostanaula, covered the withdrawal of Johnston's army.

Johnston's army next took up a defensive position near Cassville, north of the Etowah river, but Union artillery fire dislodged it. The next defensive position was south of the Etowah, in the mountain pass at Allatoona, Georgia. However, this pass was such a defensive stronghold that Sherman took his army across the Etowah fifteen miles upstream and headed for Dallas, Georgia, with the intent of turning east for Marietta. To avoid encirclement Johnston moved all his forces west to meet Sherman, and the two armies fought over three days at New Hope Church (May 25th), Pickett's Mill (May 27th), and Dallas (May 28th). Allen's brigade of cavalry, with Alva Hardie and the 51st Alabama, was dismounted on the right of Cleburne's division at the battle of Pickett's Mill on May 27th. During the battle they were part of the action which repulsed an assault of Union cavalry.

Both armies found the encounters unsatisfactory, and they each disengaged to permit redeployment. Sherman moved to Acworth where he waited for the repair of his rail link to Chattanooga. On June 4, 1864, Johnston also pulled away from Dallas and began his move eastward to a new defensive line across the railroad.

After some adjustments, Johnston's line ran from Brush mountain, a three hundred foot high ridge due north of Marietta and east of the railroad, to Gilgal church, several miles west of the railroad on the Sandtown road, a total distance of ten miles. About a mile forward of this line the Confederates also fortified Pine mountain, a three hundred foot high ridge between two roads leading to Marietta. In the rear, Kennesaw and Lost mountains were also fortified.

On June 10, 1864, Sherman moved forward from Acworth, but the Confederate fortifications brought him to a halt after only three miles. The Union army then dug in opposite the Confederate lines, and Sherman established his headquarters at Big Shanty (now known as Kennesaw).

Leonidas Polk was killed at Pine mountain on June 14, 1864, by a cannon ball. Ironically, he was inspecting the lines to determine whether they should be abandoned because of their proximity to the Union artillery which had fired the shot. Pine mountain was shortly abandoned. The Union army had broken the code used by the Confederates to signal from one position to the other, and it first learned of the loss of Polk from the signal for an ambulance.

Leonidas Polk graduated from West Point in 1827, but he relinquished his commission to enter the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia, in November 1828. He married Frances Deveraux of Raleigh, North Carolina, on May 6, 1830, and he was ordained a priest in May 1831. He was chosen as a Bishop on December 9, 1838, and he served as the missionary Bishop of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, the Indian Territories and the Republic of Texas. On October 16, 1841, he was chosen as the diocesan Bishop of Louisiana and moved to Leighton plantation at Bayou Lafourche, Louisiana. He was instrumental in organizing the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, although the school did not begin operation until after the war. In June 1861 Polk accepted a commission as general in the Confederate army, a decision that provoked some controversy. He was briefly relieved of duty in September 1863 when he did not advance his division as ordered at Chickamauga. Although he was exonerated of blame, his reputation as a field officer suffered. Nevertheless he was universally well liked by his men and his fellow officers. His life has been described in a two-volume biography Leonidas Polk; Bishop and General written by his son, William Mecklenburg Polk in 1915 and a later biography written by J.H. Parks, General Leonidas Polk, C.S.A.; The Fighting Bishop (1962).

Several weeks before Polk's death, his daughter Elizabeth ("Lilly," born in Maury County, Tennessee, in the summer of 1843) married Polk's aide, William Elliot Huger. The son of Major John M. Huger and Elizabeth Allen Deas, William E. Huger was born at Spring Hill (now part of Mobile), Alabama, on April 17, 1841. Huger fought at Murfreesboro where he lost a leg, and he was on Polk's staff at Chickamauga. On Polk's death Huger served as an aide to Brig. Gen. Arthur M. Manigault, and Huger suffered severe wounds with Manigault at the battle of Ezra Church during the Atlanta campaign. Lucia Polk Huger, the daughter of Elizabeth Polk and William E. Huger, was born October 30, 1875, and on January 2, 1894, she married Joseph Hardie, sixth child of John T. Hardie.

Johnston had repeatedly asked the Confederate Chief of Staff in Richmond to provide some force of cavalry to attack the railroad in Sherman's rear. Johnston wanted Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest's cavalry, which had been effective in Mississippi and western Tennessee, shifted to the Georgia theater, but he did not get Forrest. Instead, Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, who had replaced Polk in command of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and Eastern Louisiana, scoured Alabama and Mississippi for spare cavalry units to support Johnston.

On June 20, 1864, Lee ordered Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow with about 1600 of these reserve cavalry units to break the Union supply line. His force attacked the Union cavalry at Lafayette, Georgia, on the 24th. The brigade under Col. Charles G. Armistead took possession of the town, but could not drive the Union soldiers from the buildings. At the end of the day Union cavalry drove off the Confederate attackers. On June 22nd, Lee ordered Walthall in Talladega to send all his available cavalry to Rome, Georgia, to help Pillow so Walthall sent Bowie's company and Hardie's battalion. Bowie's company was to provide courier service between Pillow's force and his headquarters. Bowie and Joseph Hardie set out on the 25th and on the 28th reached Cave Springs, Georgia, where they camped. At that time they learned that Pillow's force had been repulsed on June 24th, so on July 4th they returned to Talladega.

Conversely, Sherman attempted to disrupt the Confederate supply lines. In late June 1864 he sent Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau in the direction of Opelika, Alabama, to cut the Montgomery & West Point RR which supplied Johnston's army from the west. The Rousseau force was reported on July 13th to have taken a route near Talladega, and Walthall made an effort "to arouse the citizens and to induce the members of various reserve companies to turn out," but he was able to obtain only twenty men from Hardie's battalion. These men were sent out on the 14th to join the Confederate forces opposing the raid at Blue Mountain (near Anniston). They returned to Talladega the next day to find that the Union cavalry was within a few miles of town. At 7 a.m. on July 16th the raiders entered Talladega and burned the railroad station, ransacked the post office and took commissary stores. The camp of instruction was not damaged, and Walthall reported that the raiders acted "with unusual forbearance." Walthall complained bitterly about the "apathy of citizens and the inefficiency of voluntary organizations of the reserves above the age forty-five." Walthall removed himself to the Coosa river bridge while the raiders had their way with Talladega.

On June 17, 1864, the Union offensive resumed down the Sandtown road, and Confederate troops retreated in response to a heavy artillery bombardment. That night and the next day in heavy rain, Johnston shortened his lines to seven miles by moving his left wing and withdrawing to Kennesaw mountain. Hood's corps covered the area west of the railroad where it bends around the mountain. Wheeler's cavalry, including Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama, covered Hoods' right flank.

Sherman believed that the Confederate movement during the previous night was a general retreat, so at daylight on June 19th, he advanced on the new lines to find them heavily defended. Part of the advance did reveal a weakness on Johnston's extreme left where the Powder Springs road crossed the Sandtown road. Alerted to the Union movement in this area, Johnston moved Hood's entire corps on June 21st from the extreme right of the Confederate line to the extreme left.

There on the Confederate left, near Kolb's farm on the Powder Springs road, Hood's corps of Confederates encountered several brigades of William's division under Joseph Hooker. After a Union victory at Kolb's farm the armies both resorted to skirmishing for five days.

After failing to turn the Confederate left flank at Powder Springs on June 22nd, Sherman attacked the center on June 27th. The two Union armies made a frontal assault against nearly impregnable defensive positions on, and to the south of, Kennesaw mountain. These were repulsed with terrible losses to the attackers and not inconsiderable losses to the Confederate defenders.

Sherman's next strategy was to try again to turn the Confederate left flank by circling to the south even though it meant losing contact with his rail supply line. So, after dark on June 30th the Union army began the familiar march around the Confederate left. The second step of this dance was taken by the Confederate army on July 2nd when it retreated six miles south of Marietta along a six-mile front from Nickajack creek to Rottenwood creek. July 4th produced another unsuccessful frontal assault against the Confederate center, but Stevenson's division failed to hold the flank at Nickajack creek, so the line fell back again. This time Johnston took a defensive position at the railroad bridgehead on the north side of the Chattahoochee.

Reversing what had become a pattern, Sherman chose to cross the Chattahoochee to the north, on Johnston's right, not his left. On July 9th near Roswell the Union army began to ford the river in small numbers, and then in such numbers that it became impossible for Johnston to maintain his front on the northern bank. On the night of the 9th he began yet another retreat to the south bank of the river and set up his new line two miles from the river and three miles from the center of Atlanta.

This was Johnston's last retreat; on July 18, 1864, Hood replaced Johnston as commander of the entire army. Lieut. Gen Stephen D. Lee came from Mississippi to assume command of Hood's army on July 26th.

The Union army completed its crossing of the Chattahoochee at two locations; one at Roswell and the other at Isham's ford opposite Soap (Sope) creek. These troops moved cautiously southward to Buckhead, two miles north of Peachtree creek. Sherman planned to cross Peachtree creek on July 19th. McPherson and the army of the Tennessee were to approach Atlanta from the east; Schofield and the army of the Ohio were to take Decatur from the north and then move west to Atlanta; Thomas and the army of the Cumberland were to move directly south across Peachtree creek to Atlanta.

The Confederate defensive line ran from the Chattahoochee river just below the railroad bridge easterly and parallel to Peachtree creek just beyond Peachtree road.

Hood decided to attack the Union force just after they had crossed Peachtree creek, but before they could dig trenches and build breastworks. Although it initially overran the Union outposts, the attack spent itself without throwing the Union army back into Peachtree creek as intended. Before a second attack could be ordered, Hood learned of McPherson's approach from Decatur. Wheeler's cavalry, which included Alva Hardie and the 51st Alabama, found themselves the only defenders against this threat until Hood moved Hardee's corps to the east.

On the morning of July 22nd several Confederate units attempted to turn McPherson's left flank at Bald hill. On the night of the 21st, Wheeler had been ordered to move around the Union rear. The next morning he dismounted his men and fought two regiments of infantry, capturing their position with prisoners and stores. He then moved off to reinforce Hardee's corps. Although there was no Union advance, this "Battle of Atlanta" did not result in the destruction of the Union army hoped for by the Confederate commanders. The Union left drew back behind the railroad line to Decatur and entrenched as the siege of Atlanta began.

By July 27th Sherman was impatient to capture Atlanta, so he ordered a portion of his left wing to pull out of its trenches east of Atlanta and move down the west side of Atlanta to the Lick Skillet road. Lieut. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, newly arrived from Mississippi, took two divisions out of the trenches to face the Union threat at Ezra Church on the 28th. Lee's men could not throw the Union attackers back from their new positions, but the Union attack on Atlanta went no farther.

At the same time he sent the attack around the west of Atlanta, Sherman also sent a cavalry force under Maj. Gen. George Stoneman to cut the railroad from Macon to Atlanta. In pursuit of Stoneman, Wheeler sent a portion of his cavalry, which included the 51st Alabama cavalry, under the command of Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson. Stoneman could not cross the Ocmulgee river at Macon, so he turned north. Near Clinton on July 31st Stoneman encountered Iverson's cavalry at Sunshine Church and could not break through. Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama cavalry was dismounted in front of Iverson's line of attack, and they charged on foot, routing the Union cavalry. After fighting all day, the bulk of the Union cavalry fled while Stoneman and 700 men were captured. At the same Wheeler and the rest of his cavalry destroyed McCook's Union cavalry before it could join Stoneman. As a result of these two defeats, the Union cavalry force was temporarily neutralized.

With the diminished threat from Union cavalry, Wheeler's entire force was ordered north into the Union rear to destroy the railroad lines and supply bases. The 51st Alabama cavalry with Alva Hardie was in Allen's brigade within Martin's division. Wheeler set out from Atlanta on August 10, 1864, and Martin was ordered to tear up a stretch of rail line from Tipton to Dalton. Instead, according to Wheeler, Martin failed to obey and refused to inform Wheeler of his position. Wheeler relieved Martin of his command and placed him in arrest. Wheeler and his cavalry continued north; they crossed the Tennessee and the Hiwassee; captured Athens, Tennessee, with substantial stores; and they fought a column of cavalry near Knoxville. Wheeler's men destroyed the railroad at several points between Chattanooga and Nashville and between Nashville and the west. Wheeler reported his adventures to Hood with typical exaggeration; Castel calls Wheeler's report "arrant, lying nonsense." Nevertheless Wheeler created continuous anxiety for the security of Sherman's supply line during the siege of Atlanta.

In the month after the battle at Ezra church, Union and Confederate forces faced each other across their trenches, and little fighting took place except between pickets. The Confederate fortifications formed a horseshoe around the city with the open end toward the source of supply at Macon. As the Union army edged south the Confederates extended their trenches further. On August 26th Sherman directed his right wing to shift further south in an effort to reach and destroy the railroad to Macon. By the 30th three corps of Union infantry had moved as far south as Jonesboro, crossed the Flint river and entrenched on a ridge facing the town. That night Hood ordered Lee's corps to join Hardee's corps by marching overnight to Jonesboro and to attack the next morning.

Not only was the attack unsuccessful, but other Union troops forced their way to the Macon railroad north of Jonesboro and tore up track for several miles. This separated Hardee and Lee from Hood in Atlanta, and left Atlanta with no supply line. Lee's corps was ordered back to Atlanta to cover Hood's withdrawal from the city. The next day Hardee's corps alone absorbed the Union counterattack, but repelled forces from front and rear. Hood moved south from Atlanta on the McDonough road while the Union army moved along the railroad line in the opposite direction to Atlanta. Hardee withdrew further south to Lovejoy's station where he formed a line across the railroad track. By September 3rd Lee's corps was behind Hardee's line at Lovejoy's station, and Atlanta was occupied by the Union army. The Atlanta campaign was over.

On September 3rd Sherman ordered all civilians expelled from the city and rebuilt the fortifications so the city could be defended by a small garrison force.

In mid-September Hood moved the entire Confederate army from Lovejoy's station to an encampment near Palmetto, Georgia, where he could establish a supply line to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. On September 25, 1864, Jefferson Davis visited Hood at the camp as they tried to put together a strategic plan for the future.

At his own request Hardee was transferred to take command of the coastal defenses of the Carolinas.

On September 29th and 30th the Confederate army, still under Hood's command, crossed the Chattahoochee near Campbellton, Georgia, and headed for Nashville with the intent of destroying supply lines and driving Sherman out of Atlanta. Sherman took off in pursuit on October 2nd for a two week chase. Hood captured Dalton, but attacks on Allatoona and Resaca were repulsed. Hood finally withdrew to Florence, Alabama, to protect his supply base in Selma. Sherman abandoned the chase on November 11th and returned to Atlanta to prepare for his march to the sea. General Thomas and the Union army of the Cumberland remained in Tennessee to protect Nashville and Chattanooga. On November 15th Sherman left Atlanta in ruins and began his march to Savannah, Georgia, opposed only by Wheeler's cavalry which had been detached from Hood's army for that purpose. To replace Wheeler, Forrest joined Hood's command.

On November 21st Hood's army left Florence and headed in the direction of Nashville. They fought at Columbia, Tennessee, on the Duck river, and Franklin, Tennessee, on the Harpeth river. On December 1st, the remainder of Hood's army pushed on to Nashville where it entrenched within a few miles of the city. For two weeks the Confederates shivered in their trenches awaiting an attack from Thomas' army of the Cumberland. The attack came on December 15th and 16th and resulted in a slaughter. The Confederate army of Tennessee retreated to Tupelo, Mississippi, where it did its best to reorganize and restore its fighting capabilities.

One of the purposes of the march to the sea was to replace Sherman's long rail supply line from Nashville with supply by sea through Savannah. Another was to destroy the land, a scorched earth policy. From November 15th to December 21st Sherman marched through Georgia by way of Milledgeville to Savannah with 60,000 men. During the march he was harassed by Wheeler's cavalry, but not delayed, let alone stopped. Wheeler's men fought the Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. H.J. Kilpatrick all across the southeastern part of Georgia. They chased Kilpatrick from Sandersville to Louisville to Waynesboro at the end of November. They fought several heated engagements around Waynesboro on December 2nd and 3rd with the purpose of keeping the Union cavalry from raiding Augusta. Savannah was defended by Hardee in his new command with 18,000 men, but his force withdrew to South Carolina the night before Sherman's army entered the city on December 21st. It would have been folly to have expected Wheeler's cavalry to stop Sherman's army from any march it chose to make. Yet, Wheeler was successful in keeping the Union cavalry from doing very much damage along the way. After acknowledging the loss of Savannah, Wheeler wrote on December 24, 1864:

[D]uring the last five months my command has been without wagons or cooking utensils, with orders to subsist upon the country. Its food has been limited to bread baked upon boards and stones and meat broiled upon sticks. It has not been paid in twelve months, and has not had the regular issues of clothing which have been made to the infantry. During this time it has averaged in direct marching sixteen miles a day . . . ."

This well describes Alva Hardie's life for the previous year. If he ever had a sense of adventure from the war, it was surely gone. Ordinary sicknesses which are a discomfort at home would have been more severe and endured longer. Lack of food equates to lack of health even for a strong young man. Yet these men fought on for another five months under even worse conditions.

Sherman's army set out directly after the New Year on a march through the Carolinas to destroy Confederate resistance. Sherman also hoped, ultimately, to join Grant in the capture of Richmond. For three weeks the army was engaged in crossing the Savannah river at several places. By January 21st all of the men had crossed into South Carolina, and Sherman set out by steamer for Beaufort, South Carolina. The Union invasion of South Carolina is described in detail in Sherman's March Through the Carolinas by John G. Barrett (1956).

Confederate forces remained thinly spread throughout the southeast, and Wheeler's cavalry provided the only resistance to the Union march. Soon a division of South Carolina cavalry under Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton was detached from R.E. Lee's army to return to its native state, but he balked at being placed under the command of Wheeler who was his junior in service, if not rank.

The Confederate army of the Tennessee was ordered to entrain at Tupelo, Mississippi, for Augusta, Georgia, where Sherman's next attack was expected. C.L. Stevenson, who was in command because S.D. Lee was still recovering from a wound he received at Nashville, intended to go beyond Augusta to the Combahee river, join Hardee and hold Sherman south of the river. Sherman was too fast, and the railroads, suffering from Union destruction, were too slow.

Colonel George E. Spencer, commanding the 1st Alabama (U.S.A.) cavalry reported an encounter with a brigade of Wheeler's corps, including the 51st Alabama cavalry, near Aiken, South Carolina, on February 8th. Spencer, who captured five battle flags, called it "one of the most thorough and complete routs I ever witnessed."

Wheeler's men were more successful a few days later. Sherman sent his cavalry under Brig. Gen. H.J. Kilpatrick to Aiken on February 11th to make a demonstration of force and to deceive the Confederates into thinking Sherman's objective was still Augusta. Wheeler was forewarned, and he hid his men in the side streets of the town while Kilpatrick rode up the main street. Wheeler's surprise was complete, and the Union cavalry was routed. Kilpatrick himself was nearly captured.

The victory at Aiken was of no strategic value as Sherman marched on unimpeded. Moreover, Wheeler's men were almost as destructive in their foraging as the Union cavalry. Wheeler had been ordered to requisition his own needs from the citizens and destroy every thing else to keep it from the Union army. To compound the problem, the rest of the Confederate army, moving north to meet Sherman, was also forced to subsist off the same country that Sherman's army was ravaging.

On February 17th Sherman entered Columbia, South Carolina, without opposition, and it was burned under circumstances which are still controversial. As the Union army moved north from Columbia, there were daily skirmishes between the Union advance elements and the Confederate cavalry, but there were no major engagements until the Union army crossed into North Carolina. Nevertheless, the Union advance was extraordinarily destructive. The army relied on foraging for its food, and the men who foraged burned the houses and farms and robbed the occupants. Sherman had instructed Kilpatrick:

You may burn all cotton; spare dwelling houses that are occupied, and teach your men to be courteous to women; it goes a great ways; but take all provisions and forage you need.

Kilpatrick found it impossible to control conduct which was essentially lawless, and brutal incidents continued. This foraging, more than any battle, distinguished Sherman's march through the Carolinas, and Wheeler and Kilpatrick exchanged threatening correspondence over the Confederate treatment of captured foragers. Kilpatrick claimed to have evidence that his men had been murdered by Wheeler's men, an accusation which Wheeler denied. Kilpatrick threatened to kill Confederate prisoners if the act was not explained. Wheeler threatened the same. Both commanders backed away from such retribution, but foragers continued to be treated harshly if captured. These encounters created enormous personal animosity between the opposing cavalrymen.

On February 22, 1865, R.E. Lee appointed Joseph E. Johnston commander of the Confederate army of Tennessee as well as all the other Confederate forces in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. Within a week Johnston assumed command of the forces in North Carolina.

Hardee established a base at Cheraw, South Carolina, on the Pee Dee river, but he was forced to abandon it as Sherman approached. Hardee crossed the Pee Dee with Wheeler's cavalry covering his retreat. At Phillips Cross Roads, North Carolina, Wheeler's troopers skirmished all day on March 4th with Kilpatrick's cavalry until Union artillery drove Wheeler off. On March 6th Sherman began moving the Union army across the Pee Dee at Cheraw while Union cavalry in Confederate uniforms scouted into North Carolina.

On March 8th the Union cavalry crossed the Lumber river and attacked Hardee's retreating rear guard. On the night of March 9th Kilpatrick and his men camped at Monroe's Cross-Roads near Solemn Grove, North Carolina. The next morning at daybreak Wheeler and Hampton attacked the Union camp and again almost captured Kilpatrick. Col. Spencer of the 1st Alabama (U.S.A.) described the scene:

Simultaneously on the morning of the 10th of March with our reveille the camp of the dismounted men and our camp was charged by three divisions of the enemy's cavalry, viz. Butler's, Hume's and Allen's, General Hampton personally leading the charge of Butler's division and General Wheeler leading the charge on the right with Hume's division. The camp of the dismounted men was instantly captured; also the headquarters of the division and brigade, and with the wagons and artillery. In the cavalry camp the firing became very severe, and for a time the enemy gained and held nearly two-thirds of their camp, when, by desperate fighting behind trees, the men succeeded in driving the enemy entirely out of camp and partially away from the headquarters.

The circumstances of this battle were controversial in the years after the war because of Kilpatrick's careless arrangements for pickets and his distraction from duty by a women in his headquarters. Kilpatrick, who escaped ignominiously on foot, explained his ability to recapture the camp: "The enemy, eager for plunder, failed to promptly follow us up."

The last real battle on Sherman's march through the Carolinas occurred at Bentonville on March 19-21, 1865, southwest of Goldsboro, North Carolina. The Union army was divided into column or "wings" as it marched, and it was Johnston's idea to attack the left or western wing while it was on the march and before it could be reinforced by the other columns. Wheeler's cavalry arrived at the battle in the morning of the 19th and took up a position on the right of the Confederate line, but his men were not involved in the heavy fighting late in the afternoon.

The battle at Bentonville on March 19th was a sharp defeat for the Union left wing, but it was far from the destruction which Johnston had hoped for. The next day the fighting was light, and neither side moved their lines appreciably. On March 21st there was heavy skirmishing along the entire Confederate front. A narrow Union column breached the Confederate left, and among the defenders who checked this spearhead was Brig. Gen. William W. Allen's brigade including Alva Hardie's 51st Alabama cavalry. On the night of the 21st, as the rest of the union army approached, the Confederate army withdrew back to Smithfield with Wheeler's cavalry covering the movement.

On March 23rd and 24th Sherman's army entered Goldsboro where it established a supply base and headquarters for several weeks. Sherman went to Virginia by rail and steamer to meet with Abraham Lincoln on March 27th and 28th to discuss further Union objectives. He returned the 30th. Sherman originally planned to continue north and meet Grant's army at Petersburg, but the fall of Richmond on April 5th changed his plans.

The Confederate army was also using the respite for its own refitting at Smithfield. Wheeler was encamped north of Goldsboro, and he continued to skirmish with the Union cavalry. The losses from both battle and desertion required that many of the regiments be consolidated. Wheeler's cavalry was reorganized under Lieut. Gen. Wade Hampton, but the 51st Alabama cavalry remained as a unit under Col. M.L. Kirkpatrick.

In the early summer of 1864 all the Confederate infantry regiments in Mississippi were moved east to oppose Sherman's Atlanta campaign. By the end of 1864 all that was left of the Confederate infantry in the West was holed up in Tupelo, Mississippi, trying to recover from the destruction it suffered in the Atlanta campaign and in the subsequent disasters in Tennessee. When Sherman began his Carolinas campaign at the start of 1865 all the Confederate infantry was moved from Mississippi to the Carolinas. Thus, at the beginning of 1865, Mississippi and Alabama were defended, as they had been for most of 1864, solely by cavalry units like John T. Hardie's 4th Mississippi regiment and Joseph Hardie's battalion of state reserves.

Conversely, the main Union efforts focused on Virginia and the Carolinas, so the Confederate cavalry in Alabama and Mississippi fought almost solely against raiders from Union bases in Tennessee and Vicksburg. Such raids were often carried out by surprise attack, and the defending cavalry maintained a constant vigil. In Mississippi the Confederate cavalry regiments regularly patrolled their assigned territories to locate and fight any Union raiders. From its base at Brandon, near Jackson, Mississippi, the 4th Mississippi set out at the end of 1864 and spent the next four months on the move, roaming eastern Mississippi and western Alabama. Duncan McCollum, captain of Company A of the 4th Mississippi, recorded the regiment's movements during 1865 in a diary which is on file at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

According to McCollum the regiment marched over 300 miles in December 1864. Beginning at its base at Brandon, Mississippi, it traveled to the southeast as far as Citronelle, Alabama, about thirty miles north of Mobile, and then marched back to Buckatunna, Mississippi. The regiment covered another 300 miles in January from Buckatunna north through Meridian to Macon on the Noxubee river and then back towards Jackson. This patrol covered some of the vulnerable rail lines in the east-central part of Mississippi. In February John T. Hardie's regiment patrolled the Mississippi Central RR north of Jackson. In March the men moved south of Jackson to Hazelhurst, across the Pearl river, and then back to the northeast to cross the Tombigbee river into Alabama on March 22nd. They made camp at a different location practically every night, and they rode between 10 and 25 miles a day. In contrast to Grierson's report in the summer of 1863, McCollum reported riding through the "finest farming country' at one place.

The cavalry was reorganized in March 1865, and the 4th Mississippi cavalry joined Starke's brigade. The move to the northeast was to join Starke near Columbus, Mississippi, where Forrest was also reported to be. Union scouts were evidently able to travel freely in the same general vicinity, because their reports kept track of many of these Confederate cavalry movements. The reports indicate that the Confederates were substantially weakened by desertions, a common occurrence throughout the Confederate army at that time.

Central Alabama, which had largely escaped the destructive forces of the war, suffered an invasion in early 1865 by the Union cavalry under the command of Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson. With 10,000 troopers, Wilson left Eastern Tennessee on March 22, 1865, and fought at Montevallo, Alabama (March 31st), on the way to Selma. He first seized and destroyed enormous supplies of Confederate stores in Selma (April 2nd). He then captured Montgomery (April 12th); Columbus, Georgia (April 16th); and Talladega (April 22nd). With most of the regular Confederate army resisting Sherman in the Carolinas, it was up to the cavalry in Mississippi and state militia in Alabama to defend Selma. Forrest's men, including the 4th Mississippi cavalry, were sent toward Selma in an effort to protect the important supply base. They skirmished briefly with the raiders on April 1st, but Selma fell before John T. Hardie's regiment could reach it. Joseph Hardie and his battalion of approximately 500 men were sent to Selma from Talladega. As he recorded in his own hand in a report now kept at The Historic New Orleans Collection, Joseph Hardie was ordered to go to Montevallo where he met the Wilson raiders on their way to Selma.

I was ordered to send two of my companies to join Gen'l Roddey in front of the enemy, and with the other two to cover the left hand road to Selma and when pressed to fall back as slowly as possible, as the enemy was in front of the City in great strength. Upon my arrival there I reported to Gen'l Bedford Forrest in person and was ordered to leave my horses in Weaver's Grove and place my men as a second line of defense at what is now known as the So. Railway depot on Broad Street. . . . We did not have long to wait for very soon the front line of defense was broken and the enemy came pouring over and for a while we were kept busy. Capt. John Donahoo was killed at this point. I soon saw our lines were broken on our right and the enemy came pouring in through the Range Line Road, so I undertook to take my command out of the City, but finding it impossible to do so, I told each man to look out for himself. . . . I went down to the Gee Hotel and surrendered and was sent to Watts Hall where many prisoners were congregated. . . .

As a prisoner Joseph Hardie marched from Selma to Montgomery; from there to Columbus, Georgia, he rode a mule thanks to the kindness of a Union soldier who formerly lived in Selma and knew him. At Columbus he was introduced to General Wilson who gave him a parole and sent him home. While in Columbus he learned that Lee had surrendered. >From Columbus he crossed the Chattahoochee river and reached Talladega which was by then in Union hands.

. . . I found Mrs. Hardie [his wife] quite well and greatly rejoiced to have me home again and quite well. In a few days I went to Thornhill, my Mother's home, and was the third son to arrive there - Brother Robert having preceded me and Brother James being home wounded. In a short while the others made their appearance, and our Mother had the happiness of having all her Boys at home with her again . . . .

While Joseph Hardie was enduring his captivity, John T. Hardie's cavalry regiment turned northeast away from Selma. After passing through Eutaw and Greensboro, Alabama, they doubled back retracing much of their march for the next two weeks until they rejoined their brigade on May 6th near Livingston to make their formal surrender at Gainesville, Alabama. McCollum calculated that the regiment had marched over a thousand miles since the beginning of the year. Their riding was not done, for John T. Hardie visited Tuskegee and Talladega before returning to New Orleans in July.

Although the war was over for many of the Hardie brothers it was not yet over for Alva. On April 10th Sherman broke camp and headed for Raleigh; in reaction the Confederates immediately withdrew from Smithfield, also in the direction of Raleigh, leaving the cavalry to slow the Union advance. Part of the Union army reached Smithfield on the 11th and occupied it unopposed. The Confederates reached Raleigh in the afternoon on the 11th.

About the time his forces were approaching Raleigh, Sherman learned of R.E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9th. Sherman accepted the surrender of Raleigh on the 13th from the civil authorities as the Confederate army left, again with only Wheeler's cavalry to cover the withdrawal.

The infantry of both armies had little opportunity to fight during the march through the Carolinas. It was the cavalry that did most of the fighting, and the brutal treatment of foragers led to powerful hatred between the forces. When the commanders met to discuss the terms of surrender, the opposing infantry aides greeted each other warmly with respect. But the cavalry commanders found it difficult to speak to, let alone shake hands with, their opposite numbers. Their feelings were murderous and mutual. Consequently, it is no surprise that the Confederate cavalry claims to have inflicted the final casualty of the war on the Union army. According to the official history of the 51st Alabama cavalry, on file with the State of Alabama Department of Archives and History, this is the way it occurred:

On the 13th of April General Wheeler ordered Captain Shannon to send a non-commissioned officer of daring and intelligence to him. Shannon selected Sergeant A.F. Hardie of the 51st Alabama who had entered the service at the outbreak of the war, a youth perhaps of seventeen years, the youngest of several brothers from Talladega County, who were volunteers in the army. The General instructed Sergeant Hardie to select six men to ride, as he explained, on a perilous expedition. He wished to know on what roads General Sherman's army was distributed, and where the cavalry was, and where the infantry was, and in what strength, as could be ascertained. Hardie selected the six men, all young and tried.

On the way into the enemy's lines, the scout met Mastin O. Marshall of Dallas County, Ala., and by his urgent solicitation, he was allowed to join them. The squad then numbered 8 men. By midday on the 14th the scout was ready to return to report. They turned into a narrow lane enclosed by a heavy rail fence, built with the "worm." Ahead of them, and meeting them, were eleven men of a western cavalry regiment of Kilpatrick's corps. Hardie promptly ordered the charge. Soon ten of the blue coats were hors de combat, captured or killed. The eleventh man, Wolf by name, turned back in full flight with DuBose, freshly mounted from home, in close pursuit, shouting: "Surrender or I'll shoot." Wolf paid no attention, and DuBose rode up to his side with a pistol in his face, warning the fleeing man to halt; the response, a carbine ball through his pursuer's brain. DuBose's horse cut across the front of Wolf's horse and turned him into a corner of the fence. This check of speed of the bluecoat gave Sergeant Hardie, following at full run, the opportunity to shoot him. It took three shots from Hardie's large revolver to bring him to the dust. He was a brave man who had resolved, his comrades announced, to die in combat rather than surrender.

Men from the enemy's camp hearing the firing so near rushed forward. The Confederates fled, taking their fallen comrade's horse and arms with them. A negro man, a slave, buried the two dead, each in his own grave in the worm of the rail fence. Mastin Marshall returned and brought the remains of the Confederate to St. Michael's graveyard in Marengo County for sepulcher.

So the last shot fired in the war for Confederate independence was by A.F. Hardie of Talladega County, Alabama; and the last Confederate soldier killed was Eugene DuBose of Marengo County, Alabama, private in the ranks of the 51st Alabama Cavalry.

On the 14th Wheeler's cavalry was encamped at Chapel Hill, but it was evacuated on April 16th in order to avoid damage to the University. The Union cavalry occupied Chapel Hill on the 17th.

As a result of Lee's surrender, Johnston wrote to Sherman proposing a truce to permit the civil authorities to negotiate peace. Sherman met with Johnston on April 17th and again on April 18th at the Bennett house, half way between Hillsboro and Durham, North Carolina. Their meeting resulted in an armistice, and they agreed on proposed terms whereby all the Confederate forces, not just those facing Sherman, would surrender. Sherman also informed Johnston of the assassination of Lincoln which had occurred on April 14th.

During the armistice it was difficult to keep the Confederate soldiers in their camps; many deserted. On April 20th Wheeler was engaged on the Greensboro and Salisbury road getting men "back to commands."

The cabinet in Washington, influenced in some degree by Lincoln's murder, would not agree to the generous terms proposed by Sherman who informed Johnston on April 24th. The next day Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to take up the fight again. Davis' order to continue the fight was madness; he seems to have been under some demented desire to bring destruction upon the South as he was driven from office. Total defeat was imminent. The only fighting would have been by guerrillas who would surely have provoked even more destruction of the South. Accordingly, Johnston had no choice but to surrender, especially as his armies melted away. On April 26th at Bennett's house, Johnston and Sherman agreed to end the war.

Notice of the surrender was quickly wired to all Confederate commands. All troops were ordered to report to designated Union commands to surrender their arms and sign paroles to apply until their status was formally resolved by the federal government. Johnston wrote to his army on May 2, 1865, in General Order No. 22:

In terminating our official relations I most earnestly exhort you to observe faithfully the terms of the pacification agreed upon, and to discharge the obligations of good and peaceful citizens at your homes as well as you have performed the duties of thorough soldiers in the field. . . . I now part with you with deep regret, and bid you farewell with feelings of cordial friendship and with earnest wishes that you may have hereafter all the prosperity and happiness to be found in the world.

On May 6th Johnston also wrote to the people of the Confederate states to explain the surrender. After describing the military situation and the problems of supply, he said that it "was impossible to continue the war, except as robbers." For those who had endured the foragers, this must have struck a responsive chord.

Wheeler's cavalry surrendered at Durham, North Carolina, and he boasted that he ended the war with more men than he started, the result of his magnetism in attracting recruits even in the darkest hour of the war. But the 51st Alabama cavalry was greatly reduced in numbers when it surrendered; presumably its men had used their horses to get home as soon as the armistice was announced.

Word of the surrender reached Forrest, and he was directed to have his cavalry sign their paroles at Gainesville, Alabama. Forrest addressed his men on May 8th:

Civil war, such as you have just passed through, naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings, and so far as in our power to do so to cultivate friendly feelings toward those with whom we have so long contested and heretofore so widely but honestly differed.

John T. Hardie evidently surrendered with the 4th Mississippi, but there is no record of his surrender as there is for other Confederate soldiers in the regiment.

On May 29, 1865, a general amnesty was issued for members of the Confederate army, but it exempted general officers and members of the civil government as well as citizens with a net worth exceeding $20,000. On December 15, 1865, Joseph Hardie was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson on the recommendation of Governor Parsons of Alabama. There is no record that any of the other Hardies received such a pardon.

After the surrender all of the Hardie brothers returned, as best they could, to the lives they had left. The world they returned to was much changed. The economics of farming at Thornhill had been irrevocable altered by the abolition of slavery, but Mary Mead Hardie occupied Thornhill until her death there, surrounded by her children, on February 18, 1872. In eulogy her minister said: "She seemed to be always doing and saying just the right thing at the right time in the right way." After Mary Mead Hardie's death, her daughter Ann Eliza Lewis and Ann Eliza's husband J.M. Lewis, who lived in New Orleans, bought Thornhill and spent much of their time there.

John Timmons Hardie returned to New Orleans with his family, and in July 1865, he wrote to William T. Hardie in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, to ask him to help reactivate the cotton factor business in New Orleans. As a friend of Paul Tulane, John T. Hardie was a member of the original board of administrators of Tulane University, he was a member of a number of prestigious civic organizations, and he was an elder of the presbyterian church. He was also a member of a mardi gras organization. He died at his home in New Orleans on April 10, 1895, aged 65.

After the war James White Hardie remained in Talladega as a planter until 1867 when he moved to Montgomery. There he was engaged in the wholesale grocery business until his death on October 5, 1884, aged 53. He too had served as an elder in the presbyterian church, and was active in the Masons. He married his third wife in October 1865, but she died in childbirth in October 1870. He married his fourth wife, who survived him, in 1872.

Joseph Hardie operated a store in Talladega after the war, but in the fall of 1865 he returned to Selma where he traded cotton until his business failed. He and his wife had no children of their own, but they raised two of his nephews. In 1889 Joseph Hardie moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where he helped establish City National Bank. He sold out in 1892, and shortly after 1902 Joseph and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California. Joseph Hardie had been an elder in the presbyterian church, and he founded the first YMCA for Negroes in the South. He and his wife were also noted for their support of Booker T. Washington. Joseph Hardie died in Los Angeles on May 15, 1915, aged 81, and his wife died six months later.

Taul Bradford resumed the practice of law in Talladega after he returned from the war. He served in the state legislature, and he served a term in the United States House of Representatives beginning in 1874, and he was a member of the Congress which resolved the disputed election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. His two campaigns for the U.S. Senate were unsuccessful. He continued to suffer from tuberculosis until his death in Talladega on October 28, 1883, aged 48. Belle Hardie Bradford died from tuberculosis two years later in Talladega on December 5, 1885, aged 50. Only seven of her thirteen children survived, and the five who were under fourteen at her death were raised by other members of the Hardie family.

Robert Alexander Hardie returned home after the war to a successful life as a farmer and merchant in Perry County, Alabama. He married his first wife, Daisy Walthall on October 8, 1868, and after her death in 1887, he married Stella Poelinitz in 1890. He served in the Alabama legislature from 1898 until 1902. Robert Hardie died in Perry County on August 13, 1912.

William Tipton Hardie joined his brother John in New Orleans after the war and became a partner in his cotton trading business. He married Ella Frierson on January 20, 1870, and they had eight children. He was an elder in the presbyterian church and a very successful businessman. He and his brother divided their businesses in 1890. William T. Hardie died in New Orleans on February 26, 1926, at the age of eighty-five. Although he had spent the entire civil war in the midst of battle, his grand-children recall him saying many times that it would have been a tragedy if the South had won the war.

Alva Finley Hardie was just twenty-one years old when the war ended. He returned to Talladega and married Elizabeth Mallory on May 29, 1866. They lived in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, then in New Orleans, and still later in Dallas where Alva was a cotton broker. They had eight children. Elizabeth died in Dallas on April 27, 1911, and Alva died eight years later at age 75 on July 19, 1919, also in Dallas.

Ann Eliza Hardie, John Hardie's eighth child, was born in 1846 and only fifteen years old when the war started. While visiting her brothers in New Orleans after the war, she met J.M. Lewis, a friend of her brother John. She and J.M. Lewis were married November 23, 1869, at Thornhill. J.M. Lewis was born December 5, 1835 (or perhaps 1833 according to some sources) in Winterboro, Alabama, and he would have been the right age to have served in the Confederate army. However, his Civil War service is as much a mystery as his first name. He was sometimes known as Jefferson M. Lewis, but he was usually known as James M. Lewis. There are several men named James Lewis in the Alabama records. There was even a man by that name from Talladega county who enlisted in Company E, 10th Alabama infantry regiment (Taul Bradford's first regiment), on June 4, 1861. However, this recruit was only twenty years old (J.M. Lewis would have been twenty-five), and this recruit was killed at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862. There are also several Confederate veterans named J.M. Lewis in the veterans records of Mississippi and Louisiana, but without more information it is not possible to identify any of them as the same man who married Ann Eliza Hardie.

Only Thomas Chalmers Hardie, of John Hardie's seven sons, did not serve in the war. He was only 12 when the war started, and he spent the duration of the war at Thornhill. After the war he entered Virginia Military Institute. He returned to Talladega, and married Hannah Welch on January 22, 1874, two years after his mother's death. They lived in Talladega and Selma, Alabama, and in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, before moving to Texas in 1892. Thomas died six months later, on March 22, 1893, at age forty-four, leaving his young widow with nine children.

For some of the Hardie brothers the Civil War was an event which defined their lives. Joseph Hardie retained the title of "Major" and Robert Hardie the title of "Captain" for the rest of their lives. John T. Hardie seldom spoke of his Civil War experiences. William T. Hardie, Alva F. Hardie, Joseph Hardie and Robert A. Hardie were photographed at the reunion of Confederate soldiers in Little Rock, Arkansas, in March 1911 on the 50th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter. The effort these men took to attend such a reunion suggests that for them the war was a singular event, never to be forgotten.

The Washington Artillery survived the war as a relief and benefit association to take care of its sick and disabled veterans and their families. In 1875, William T. Hardie was elected junior first lieutenant of Company B when the battalion was reorganized. In 1880, on the 40th anniversary of its founding, a monument to its dead and their battles was erected in Metairie Cemetery. The Washington Artillery also fought, under a different unit designation, in both World Wars.

The only first hand account we have of the Civil War service of any of the Hardie brothers is the brief account written by Joseph Hardie of his capture at the battle for Selma at the end of the war. Otherwise our history of their service in the war must be based on secondary sources, some of which are contemporary and others written much later when memories have dimmed or become clouded by the myths of the great southern cause.

The most comprehensive source of information about the war is the official documents of the Civil War that appear in The War of the Rebellion; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies published in 158 volumes between 1880 and 1901 by the United States Government Printing Office. These official records contain a wealth of information about the actions of the units in which Hardies served. Occasionally they even mention one of the Hardies by name. For the most part, however, the presence of an individual within a company must be assumed, and the movement of individual companies must often be inferred from the movements of the larger bodies of which they are part. All of the accounts of battles and troop movements recounted above are taken from the Official Record unless otherwise indicated. Similarly, unless otherwise identified, the Official Record is the source of all quotations.

Another important source of information about individual Confederate soldiers are the veterans records maintained by each state for the men who served in the units raised within the state. Consequently, we have the bare outline of the Hardies' service from the archives of the states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Yet, these records are far from perfect; there are inconsistencies and errors as well as omissions in the record.

Still another valuable source of information is the histories of individual regiments written after the war. Alabama and Mississippi both embarked on a project at the end of the last century to create histories from the recollections of surviving veterans. These histories vary in quality according to the skills of the surviving veterans who served as authors, but they are a rich source of information not recorded in the more formal records preserved contemporaneously. Some regimental histories, such as William Owen's history of the Washington Artillery were actually published.

Nevertheless, all of these sources suffer from one deficiency or another. Battle reports written contemporaneously are often self serving, exculpatory, or downright deceitful. Later first hand accounts suffer from the frailty of human memory.

All of these factors make the great histories of the Civil War extremely useful to resolve conflicts and to understand the individual actions in which the Hardies were involved, even though none of the Hardies are actually mentioned. A bibliography which listed these sources could run on for pages, but would establish no more than the pretensions of the author. Those individual works that have been especially helpful are listed in the text; otherwise the greater works are not listed here. Yet this description of the Hardies' participation in the war should make these greater works all the more interesting.

Front Row: Joseph Hardie (1833 - 1916); Robert Alexander Hardie (1838 - 1912). Back Row: William Tipton Hardie (1840 - 1926); Alva Finley Hardie (1844 - 1919); James Spence (son of Helen Hardie Spence; 1836 - )

Photograph taken at the Confederate reunion in Little Rock, Arkansas, in March 1911 on the fiftieth anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter.