For Scott Countians, the darkest days of the war
Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s march through Scott County in August 1863, and his subsequent capture of Knoxville, had represented a major tidal change in the Civil War, especially for Scott County and the rest of East Tennessee.
After a number of minor skirmishes in Scott County between April 1, 1862 and January 15, 1863 — the Battle of Brimstone, the Battle of Huntsville, the Duck Shoals Skirmish and the mysterious Battle for the Bacon — and two years of constant raiding and looting, things were quietening down on the homefront.
But the fall of Knoxville in 1863 and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in Appomattox, Virginia. on April 9, 1865, were 16 months apart. For perspective, as much time would elapse between the Union occupation of Knoxville and the end of the war as had elapsed between the Battle of Huntsville in 1862 and the arrival of Burnside’s army in Scott County. Of the Civil War’s 20 costliest battles in terms of casualties, nine were yet to come.
The war was not over. And Scott County would learn that the hard way not long after Burnside chased Gen. James Longstreet out of Knoxville for good. The community’s greatest tragedy of the war was yet to be endured — though it wouldn’t happen at home.
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November 6, 1863 was a day that Winfield’s Nancy Hamby Chitwood likely never forgot. That’s the day that her husband and three of her sons — all fighting for the Union army — were captured when Confederate forces overran the 2nd Tennessee Infantry at the Battle of Rogersville in upper East Tennessee. Two-thirds of the regiment was captured that day, and most of them would never return home. That included all four of the Chitwood men, and nearly two dozen others from Scott County.
Over the course of four months in 1864 — as the Civil War continued to be waged in places like The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and Spotsylvania — the Chitwoods died, one by one, in Rebel prison camps. Back home in Scott County, Nancy Chitwood would not learn of what had happened to her family for months to come.
Not that Nancy Chitwood was alone in her plight. November 6, 1863 was a dark day for a number of families from Scott and Morgan counties. It was these two Union strongholds on the Cumberland Plateau that made up the bulk of the 2nd Tennessee, and many of the regiment’s soldiers were hauled away to the Confederates’ disease-ridden prisons after the battle was fought.
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If not for what was happening some 65 miles to the southwest in Knoxville, where Burnside had occupied the city, and what was about to happen further southwest at Chattanooga, where Grant would rout the Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg, Rogersville might have been seen as a more important battle for the Rebels.
The Confederacy, once enjoying a string of successes under General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, was suddenly reeling. Since Bragg’s victory at Chickamauga in September, things had not gone well, and the Union had run off a string of victories in Virginia in Tennessee, winning battles at places like Blountville, Blue Springs, Auburn, Bristoe Station, Wauhatchie, and Collierville.
But at Rogersville in Hawkins County, a tiny place along the Tennessee-Virginia border and the oldest town in Tennessee, Confederate forces under Brig. Gen. William E. Jones scored a decisive victory.
On the morning of November 6, 1863, the soldiers under Jones’ command surprised Federal forces from the 2nd Ohio Cavalry, the 7th Ohio Cavalry, the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery, and the 2nd Tennessee.
The Union forces were quickly overran. Only five were killed — all from the 2nd Tennessee — but 647 were captured, including 494 from the 2nd Tennessee. A total of 20 officers were among the regiment’s captured.
In the words of one Kentucky soldier who witnessed the battle, “I want to see no more battlefields. The utter destruction of property and life. All kinds of clothing and camp equipage; scattered in profusion over the ground. Horses shot dead at their hitching post, or rolling in the agonies of death — and the dead and wounded men neglected lying there alone-alone-alone.”
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The 2nd Tennessee Infantry was certainly not new to the war in November 1863. The regiment had been involved in the Battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky, where Confederate Gen. Felix Zollicoffer was killed, in January 1862. The regiment was also involved in the Battle of Wildcat in Kentucky, and the Battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
In 1863, the 2nd Tennessee became a mounted infantry, and was put in pursuit of notorious Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan, who was terrorizing Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio and made at least one excursion into Scott County.
Not only was two-thirds of the regiment captured at Rogersville, but two-thirds of those captured would die as a result of their confinement at Rebel prisons.
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John H. Chitwood was the oldest son of Daniel and Anna Chitwood, born in 1810. He was the grandson of James Chitwood, a Revolutionary War soldier who moved to present-day Winfield with his family after the war of independence. The area came to be known as Chitwood, and James Chitwood was the community’s first postmaster. It is for one of his sons, Pleasant Chitwood, that the area known as Pleasant Grove was named for.
The Chitwood family was fairly well off. In 1850, the family had 75 acres of improved land, 500 acres of unimproved land, seven mules, two oxen, five cattle, 40 sheep and 350 swine. They grew rye, corn and tobacco on their farm.
John married Nancy Hamby, who had been born in North Carolina and emigrated to Scott County with her family, in 1835. Over the next 22 years, the couple had 11 children: son Henry Hamby in 1836, son Daniel in 1838, daughter Sarah Ann in 1839, son James Harrison in 1841, son Granville in 1843, son Lorenzo Dorsey in 1844, daughter Armelda in 1846, son Alfonzo in 1849, daughter Elizabeth in 1851, son Isaac Martin in 1853 and daughter Laura in 1857.
John had six minor children still living at home when he enlisted in Company G of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry on October 25, 1861. He was at the Battle of Mill Springs when Zollicoffer was killed in January 1862, and rose to the rank of corporal. His brother, Joel Chitwood, was also fighting for the Union as a member of the East Tennessee National Guard, as were two of Joel Chitwood’s sons, Granville C. Chitwood and James Harvey Chitwood.
Three of John and Nancy’s seven sons followed their father into the service and joined his regiment: Henry, the oldest, who joined on January 8, 1862 and was a sergeant; Daniel, the second-oldest, who joined with his father on October 25, 1861 and was a third sergeant; and James, the third-oldest, who also enlisted with his father on October 25, 1861. John was 51 at the time, while Henry was 25, Daniel was 23 and James was 20. None of the boys were married.
John, Daniel and James all traveled to Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky, where they joined other Scott Countians like Hamilton and Fielding Griffith as part of the Southern loyalists who were training for what was initially intended to be an invasion to free East Tennessee from the Confederacy.
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Following their capture at Rogersville on November 6, 1863, the Chitwoods were marched to a railroad station in Bristol, Tennessee, where they were loaded onto a train and taken to the Belle Isle prison camp in Richmond, Virginia.
Andrew Jackson “Jack” Snow, a private in Company A of the 2nd Tennessee, was one of those captured. He spent 13 months at Belle Isle and described what he saw to a journalist in Roane County, Tennessee. That led to the writing of this account:
“That night the men were herded onto the road and, through all the long night hours, the Rebels marched their captives towards Bristol in an effort to, as quickly as possible, get them out of the country where they might come upon a large Union force. Some of the men escaped in the darkness, but the Rebel force was so large it prevented any wholesale escape of the men and morning found them still captives on their way to a horrible fate.”
Daniel Chitwood, the second-oldest son, was the first of the men to fall ill. He was hospitalized with a case of bronchitis on February 20, 1864, just three months after their capture. He was also the first to die, succumbing to his illness on March 19, 1864.
The youngest son, James Harrison, who had been just 20 when the war began, was the next to become sick. On February 24, 1864, four days after his brother was led away to the infirmary, he fell sick with dysentery. He died on April 6, 1864.
Eighteen days following James’ death, the father, John Chitwood, developed diarrhea. He had been transferred from Belle Isle to a new POW compound in Andersonville, Georgia. He died on April 24, 1864. He is buried at the cemetery at Andersonville in Grave No. 717.
Finally, Henry Hamby Chitwood, the oldest son of John and Nancy, became sick from diarrhea and tuberculosis. He was admitted to the hospital at Richmond on March 14, 1864. He was paroled on April 16, 1864, and admitted to Jarvis Hospital at Baltimore, Maryland, where he died on July 24, 1864. He was buried at Vaca Cemetery in Baltimore, in Grave No. 905.
It is not known when news of the deaths reached back home to Scott County, but it was not until January 1, 1866 that Scott County Court appointed Archibald Murphy, a neighbor of the Chitwoods, as a guardian for the minor children of John Chitwood.
Nancy Chitwood died on July 18, 1887 at the age of 71. She is buried at Davis Cemetery on Alderville Road in Winfield.
Meanwhile, the Chitwood men weren’t the only soldiers from Scott County to die after their capture at Rogersville. There were others, including Pvt. John C. Bowls, who died on February 16, 1864 of diarrhea; Pvt. Iredell Buttram, who died April 20, 1864 of dysentery; Sgt. Ransom J. Conner, who died February 28, 1864 of phthisis; Cpl. Hugh B. Holdaway, who died October 15, 1864 of scurvy; Pvt. William McCoy, who died July 24, 1864 of diarrhea; Cpl. James McDonald, who died December 9, 1863 of diarrhea; Sgt. Samuel McDonald, who died on June 14, 1864 of pneumonia; Pvt. Gaston Patterson, who died on February 4 1864 of smallpox; Sgt. John C. Robinson, who died on June 20, 1864 of diarrhea; Pvt. Cicero P. Ryan, who died July 1, 1864 of dysentery; Pvt. Hiram Sexton, who died on February 16, 1864 of diarrhea; Pvt. Caswell Smith, who died May 25, 1864 of diarrhea, Pvt. Joseph Thomas who died on January 26, 1864 of diarrhea; Pvt. William T. West, who died on August 2, 1864 of anasarca; and Pvt. Timothy Phillips, who died on August 23, 1864 of anasarca. There may have been others, as well.
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Many of those who died were being held captive at Belle Isle. The rest were at Andersonville, like John H. Chitwood. Others who died at Andersonville included Buttram, Holdaway, McCoy, Samuel McDonald, Phillips, Robinson, Ryan, Smith, West and Phillips.
Other Scott Countians who died at Andersonville included Pvt. William Bowling, Pvt. Emerson Looper, Pvt. George McDonald, and Pvt. Richard Newport.
Belle Isle was bad. Andersonville was worse. Camp Sumter, as the prison camp at Andersonville was formally called, was designed for 10,000 prisoners. But 30,000 were crammed inside. It was the death place of an estimated 13,000 Union soldiers, who wasted away in inhumane conditions. Almost 3 in every 10 men sent there did not make it out alive.
“Think of it! Picture it, if you can!” wrote John Howard Stibbs, a member of the military commission that investigated war crimes at Andersonville after the war had ended. “A great field so filled with men that there was scarcely enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time — without shelter of any kind to shield them from the southern sun or frequent rains.”
Besides the unsanitary conditions, Union prisoners at Andersonville were subjected to criminal treatment and torture, such as being shot if they stepped over a deadline, being refused rations, the use of stocks and hounds, bucking and gagging, tying up by the thumbs, flogging, and being chained to posts.
Confederate Capt. Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville, was arrested after the war and put on trial for the deaths of John Chitwood, his three sons, and thousands of others. He was hanged in 1865, becoming one of only two Confederate officers to be executed for war crimes. The other was the terrorizer of the Cumberlands, Champ Ferguson.
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By the end of July 1864, there was light at the end of the tunnel for the United States. Atlanta had fallen, and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would begin his March to the Sea soon thereafter. In just nine more months, the war would be over.
But the tragedies were still hitting home in Scott County, where the war had already carried such a heavy toll. There had been a number of tragedies since the war began: the death of George Marcum, the debilitating injuries of his cousin Julia and the subsequent death of her father, Hiram, after the family was forced to flee Scott County; the death of Ambers Strunk as he helped defend Home Guard organizer William H. Robbins at the Battle of Brimstone in 1862; the lynching of Ransom Vanover and Lark Cross; the murder of W.H. Sewell, who was guilty of nothing more than being a supporter of the Confederacy; the deaths of the Tackett boys at Station Camp; and on and on. But there were no greater losses in the war than the ones endured by the Chitwood family. In just four months, a father and three of his sons had all died. And the war still wasn’t over. It harkened back to Congressman Horace Maynard’s words in December 1862, as he had described the atrocities occurring in Scott County: “Oh, Lord, how long?”