Produced by Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) SKETCH OF THE FIRST KENTUCKY BRIGADE BY ITS ADJUTANT GENERAL, G. B. HODGE. FRANKFORT, KY. PRINTED AT THE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFICE. MAJOR & JOHNSTON. 1874. TO GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, ITS NOBLE COMMANDER, TO THE GALLANT SURVIVORS, AND TO THE MEMORY OF THE IMMORTAL DEAD OF THE BRIGADE, THIS SKETCH IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. SKETCH OF THE 1ST KENTUCKY BRIGADE. In the general history which will go down to posterity of such immense bodies of men as were gathered under the banners of the Confederate States of America, it is not likely that more than a brief and cursory reference can or will be made to the services of so small a force as composed the First Kentucky Brigade. Yet the anomalous position which it occupied, in regard to the revolution, in having revolted against both State and Federal authority, exiling itself from home, from fortune, from kindred, and from friends--abandoning everything which makes life desirable, save honor--gave it an individuality which cannot fail to attract the attention of the calm student, who, in coming years, traces the progress of the mighty social convulsion in which it acted no ignoble part. The State, too, from which it came, whatever may be its destiny or its ultimate fate, will remember, with melancholy and mournful interest, not, perhaps, unmingled with remorse, the career of that gallant band of men, who, of all the thousands in its borders inheriting the proud name and lofty fame of Kentuckians, stood forth fearlessly by deeds to express the sentiments of an undoubted majority of her people--disapprobation of wrong and tyranny. Children now in their cradles, youths as yet unborn, will inquire, with an earnest eagerness which volumes of recital cannot satisfy, how their countrymen demeaned themselves in the fierce ordeal which they had elected as the test of their patriotism; how they bore themselves on the march and in the bivouac; how in the trials of the long and sad retreat; how amid the wild carnage of the stricken field. Fair daughters of the State will oftentimes, even amid the rigid censorship which forbids utterance of words, love to come in thought and linger about the lonely graves where the men of the Kentucky Brigade sleep, wrapped in no winding-sheets save their battle-clothes, beneath no monuments save the trees of the forest, torn and mutilated by the iron storm, in which the slumberers met death. It has seemed to me not improper, therefore, that the story should be told by one