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General William B. Bate Camp #34 Sons of Confederate Veterans, Gallatin, TN (2026)

The General William B Bate Camp 34 Sons Of Confederate Veterans is located in Gallatin, Tennessee and exists to honor the brave men who served and fought for The Confederate States of America in The War For Southern Independence 1861-1865. Camp 34 is named in honor of Major General William Brimage Bate of Sumner County Tennessee. General Bate also served as the Governor of Tennessee from 1883 until 1887, when he was elected U S Senator in 1887, an office he held until his death in 1905. The SCV is a hereditary organization for male descendants of soldiers who served honorably with the Confederate States Of America, 1861-1865. We are dedicated to the preservation of the history of the Confederacy so that future generations may understand the motives that galvanized the Southern Cause. Our main purpose is to honor the memory of the men who served the Confederacy, so that future generations do not forget the sacrifices that so many gave for their country. You are urged to join us in our community service projects and study of American history. We have members who will gladly assist you with genealogical research of your ancestors and help to find a Confederate in your lineage. Camp 34 is responsible for maintenance of Confederate Circle at the Gallatin City Cemetery and is active with reenactment groups- "The Thomas K Porter Battery CSA" and "The Sumner County Light Artillery CSA".

09/10/2026

"The Brandon Brothers Of The 1st Tennessee Infantry"

Cpl. Alexander W. Brandon, Pvt. Edmond Brandon, and Pvt. James M. Brandon, Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry. Residents of Gallatin, Tennessee, the Brandon brothers enlisted in the summer of 1861. Alexander, left, Edmond, center, and James on the right. Alexander suffered a head wound early in the war and spent the remainder of the war working as a nurse. Edmond survived the war. James was killed on 27 June 1864 at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia in fighting at the Dead Angle.

Lest We Forget 🌹, Salute 🫡

09/09/2026

HISTORY MATTERS: SUMNER COUNTY AT WAR

THE CAVALRY WAR COMES HOME

Gallatin, the L&N Railroad, and the Fight for Sumner County

For the Sumner County men we have been following, the Civil War had begun as something that took them away from home.

They enlisted in local companies.

They rode north toward Kentucky.

They guarded Confederate supplies.

They went south to Shiloh.

They reorganized and rode back into Kentucky during the campaign of 1862.

But by late 1862, something fundamental had changed.

The war had come home.

Gallatin and the countryside surrounding it were no longer simply places from which soldiers departed.

They had become part of the battlefield.

And the reason was a pair of steel rails running directly through Sumner County.

THE LOUISVILLE & NASHVILLE RAILROAD

The Louisville & Nashville Railroad was one of the most strategically important transportation routes in the Western Theater.

Look at the geography.

Louisville became an enormous Union supply base.

Nashville fell to Federal forces in February 1862.

Between them ran the L&N.

And between Louisville and Nashville sat:

Gallatin.

Every locomotive carrying soldiers, am******on, food, horses or military equipment south depended upon that railroad remaining open.

That made Sumner County strategically important far beyond its size.

For the United States Army, the railroad had to be protected.

For Confederate cavalry, it was an obvious target.

THE SAME RAILROAD — A DIFFERENT WAR

There is a wonderful irony in the story of the Sumner County cavalrymen.

Early in the war, men of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion had helped protect the railroad for the Confederacy.

Now many of those same men served in the reorganized 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

And the railroad was in Federal hands.

Their mission had reversed.

The line they had once guarded was now something Confederate cavalry wanted to disrupt.

Destroy a bridge. Tear up track. Burn supplies. Capture a train.

Force the enemy to station hundreds of soldiers along miles of railroad.

A relatively small mounted force could create problems completely out of proportion to its numbers.

JOHN HUNT MORGAN COMES TO GALLATIN

No Confederate cavalryman demonstrated that more dramatically in Sumner County than John Hunt Morgan.

On August 12, 1862, Morgan’s cavalry struck Gallatin.

The Federal garrison was commanded by Colonel William Boone of the 28th Kentucky Infantry.

Morgan captured the town and its garrison.

Then he turned his attention to the railroad.

Railroad property was destroyed.

Supplies were seized or burned.

The L&N was disrupted.

For Gallatin residents, this was no distant newspaper account of a battle in Virginia or Mississippi.

Confederate cavalry was riding through their streets.

THE FEDERALS COME BACK

The Union Army could not simply abandon Gallatin.

The railroad was too important.

Federal troops returned.

That created exactly the kind of war Sumner County would increasingly experience:

occupation, raids, counter-raids, scouting, arrests, foraging, guerrilla activity, and sudden cavalry fights.

Control of the countryside could change rapidly.

A place might be occupied by Federal soldiers one day and visited by Confederate cavalry the next.

And civilians lived in the middle of it.

GALLATIN BECOMES A MILITARY POST

Federal forces established a substantial presence around Gallatin.

The railroad depot, bridges and other infrastructure required protection.

Troops patrolled roads and watched for Confederate cavalry.

For local residents, military occupation changed everyday life.

Soldiers needed food.

Armies needed horses.

Fences became firewood.

Barns contained military necessities.

Men suspected of aiding one side or the other could be arrested.

Information became valuable.

And loyalties mattered.

Sumner County contained strong Confederate sentiment.

But not everyone supported secession.

Neighbors could find themselves on opposite sides of a national war being fought literally through their own communities.

FORREST ENTERS THE STORY

And now another familiar name becomes increasingly important:

Nathan Bedford Forrest.

By the end of 1862, Forrest had demonstrated an extraordinary talent for cavalry warfare.

His operations threatened Federal communications throughout Middle and West Tennessee.

Forrest understood something fundamental about the Union occupation of Tennessee.

The Federal armies depended upon long supply lines.

Those supply lines could not be defended everywhere.

A cavalry force that moved quickly could strike where the enemy was weak and disappear before superior forces concentrated against it.

Railroads were ideal targets.

And Sumner County’s railroad made the county part of that larger contest.

THE SUMNER COUNTY MEN HAD AN ADVANTAGE

Now think about Odom’s former Company F—the men we have followed into Company G of the 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

For Confederate cavalry operating in Middle Tennessee, local men possessed something no map could completely provide.

They knew the country.

They knew which roads became mud after rain.

They knew the creeks and fords.

They knew the shortcuts between farms.

They knew where horses might be found.

They knew families who might provide food or information.

And they knew the roads leading into and out of Gallatin.

The same landscape in which they had grown up had become military terrain.

BUT THERE WAS ANOTHER SIDE TO THAT ADVANTAGE

Local knowledge came at a price.

These men were fighting near their own homes.

Their families lived inside territory increasingly controlled by Federal forces.

A Confederate cavalryman could ride within miles of his wife, children or parents—and still be unable to visit safely.

Federal authorities knew that local Confederate soldiers depended upon civilian networks.

That made families, neighbors and suspected sympathizers part of the intelligence war.

The distinction between battlefield and home front was disappearing.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CIVIL WAR

When we think of the Civil War, we naturally think of enormous battles:

Gettysburg.

Shiloh.

Chickamauga.

Antietam.

But much of the war experienced by ordinary Americans looked nothing like that.

In places like Sumner County, war often meant hearing that cavalry had been spotted on a nearby road.

A railroad bridge burning in the distance.

Soldiers arriving at a farm looking for horses.

A train carrying wounded men through town.

A neighbor being arrested.

A son slipping home briefly before returning to his regiment.

Or gunfire suddenly erupting somewhere that had been peaceful the day before.

This was war at the community level.

And it could be intensely personal.

GALLATIN WAS NOW PART OF THE WESTERN WAR

That is the larger point.

Gallatin mattered because geography mattered.

Nashville was essential to Federal operations in the Western Theater.

Louisville supplied Nashville.

The L&N connected them.

And Sumner County lay directly across that artery.

That meant Confederate cavalry would continue threatening the area.

It meant Federal troops would continue defending it.

And it meant the people of Sumner County would live with armies moving through their world.

The men who had ridden away in 1861 had gone looking for the war.

By 1862, they no longer needed to.

The war had found Sumner County.

⸻

Much of the inspiration and local detail for this series comes from Edwin Ferguson’s two-volume Sumner County in the Civil War, whose extraordinary research preserved the stories of the Sumner County men and communities touched by the conflict. This series owes Ferguson an unpayable debt.

Next — John Hunt Morgan at Gallatin: The Raid, the Railroad, and the Death of Union General Richard W. Johnson’s Cavalry Command.

History Matters.

09/07/2026

HISTORY MATTERS: SUMNER COUNTY AT WAR

COMPANY G — 2ND/22ND TENNESSEE CAVALRY

Odom’s Sumner County Horsemen Ride On

In our last installment of Sumner County at War, we stopped to untangle one of the confusing realities of Civil War research.

On June 13, 1862, the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion disappeared.

But its men did not.

The battalion was reorganized with McNairy’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry Battalion into the regiment commonly known as the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry—and officially designated the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

For the Sumner County men who had served in Captain J. T. E. Odom’s Company F, that meant another change.

Their old company was consolidated with Company E.

They were now:

Company G, 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

And their war was about to become much larger.

FROM LOCAL CAVALRY TO A FIELD REGIMENT

Think about how these men had begun.

They had mustered close to home.

They had scouted the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

They had guarded supplies.

They had protected the Louisville & Nashville Railroad around Gallatin.

Then they had gone south to Shiloh.

Now they belonged to a full cavalry regiment operating as part of the Confederate field armies in the Western Theater.

The transformation was significant.

These were no longer simply local mounted volunteers watching familiar roads.

They were becoming veteran cavalrymen.

BACK INTO KENTUCKY

During the summer of 1862, Confederate forces prepared an ambitious offensive into Kentucky.

General Braxton Bragg moved north from Tennessee while General Kirby Smith advanced from East Tennessee.

The newly reorganized Tennessee cavalry went with them.

For Sumner County soldiers, Kentucky was familiar ground.

But the purpose had changed.

In 1861 they had patrolled the border.

Now Confederate armies were attempting to carry the war northward.

Cavalry was indispensable.

It screened troop movements.

Scouted roads.

Located enemy forces.

Protected columns.

Carried messages.

And searched constantly for information.

The horsemen from Sumner County were doing exactly the kind of work for which they had enlisted.

PERRYVILLE

The Kentucky Campaign culminated on October 8, 1862, at the Battle of Perryville.

It was one of the strangest major battles of the war.

Thousands of men fought desperately across the Kentucky countryside while a phenomenon known as an acoustic shadow prevented commanders only a few miles away from clearly hearing the battle.

Tactically, Confederate troops achieved considerable success.

Strategically, the campaign failed.

Bragg withdrew from Kentucky.

The Confederacy would never again mount an invasion of the state on that scale.

For the Sumner County cavalrymen, the retreat brought them back toward Tennessee.

And toward home.

BUT HOME WAS NOW ENEMY TERRITORY

That created a painful irony.

By late 1862, much of Middle Tennessee was contested or under Federal control.

Gallatin had become an important Union post because of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

The very railroad Odom’s men had once been ordered to protect for the Confederacy was increasingly controlled and defended by United States troops.

The war had come home to Sumner County.

And for Confederate cavalrymen from the county, returning home no longer meant returning to safety.

It meant riding into territory occupied by the enemy.

THE CAVALRY WAR IN MIDDLE TENNESSEE

This was the environment in which Confederate cavalry became increasingly important.

Large armies could not be everywhere.

Cavalry could.

Mounted troops could strike railroad lines, destroy bridges, attack isolated garrisons, capture supplies and disappear before larger Union forces arrived.

Middle Tennessee became a landscape of raids, scouts, ambushes and sudden cavalry fights.

The L&N Railroad remained a particularly tempting target.

Every locomotive carrying Federal troops or supplies south from Louisville depended upon bridges, tracks and stations vulnerable to mounted raiders.

And Sumner County sat directly astride that lifeline.

For men who had grown up there, knowledge of the countryside was itself a military advantage.

They knew the roads.

They knew the crossings.

They knew the farms.

They knew where those roads led.

THEN CAME FORREST

As 1862 progressed, the regiment entered the orbit of the man who would become the most famous Confederate cavalry commander in the Western Theater:

Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Forrest understood mounted warfare instinctively.

Speed mattered.

Surprise mattered.

Information mattered.

Aggression mattered.

And above all, cavalry should not merely watch the enemy.

It should make the enemy react.

The Sumner County horsemen were entering exactly that kind of war.

The months ahead would involve raids, railroad destruction, hard riding and increasingly fierce cavalry combat.

THESE WERE NO LONGER THE MEN WHO LEFT HOME

There is another aspect of this story worth remembering.

When Odom’s men first mustered, most had no idea what four years of Civil War would actually mean.

By the end of 1862, those who remained had already experienced:

border duty,

the collapse of the Confederate position in Kentucky and Middle Tennessee,

Shiloh,

military reorganization,

the Kentucky Campaign,

and retreat back into Tennessee.

Some comrades were gone.

Some horses were gone.

Officers had changed.

Their company designation had changed.

Their regiment had changed.

And their home county had become part of the battlefield.

They were becoming veterans.

FOLLOWING THE MEN

That is why we spent time explaining the reorganization before continuing their story.

If we followed only unit names, Odom’s Company F seemed to disappear in June 1862.

If we follow the men, it did not disappear at all.

The Sumner County horsemen simply rode on under another designation:

Company G, 2nd Tennessee Cavalry.

Or, if you prefer the official Confederate designation:

Company G, 22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

And now their story begins to merge with the larger cavalry war for Middle Tennessee.

The war that had started close to home was coming back to Sumner County.

But it was returning in a far more destructive form.

⸻

Much of the information in this series is drawn from Edwin Ferguson’s two-volume history, Sumner County in the Civil War, the product of extraordinary research into the Sumner County men who went to war for their beliefs. This series owes Ferguson an unpayable debt. My hope is simply to bring the stories he preserved to a new audience.

Next — The Cavalry War Comes Home: Gallatin, the L&N Railroad, and the Fight for Sumner County.

History Matters.

09/06/2026

HISTORY MATTERS: SUMNER COUNTY AT WAR

FROM BATTALION TO REGIMENT

The Sumner County Horsemen Become the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry

For the past several installments of Sumner County at War, we have followed the Sumner County companies of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion individually.

We have met men from Castalian Springs.

We have followed Captain Micajah Griffin’s men from Fountain Head.

Most recently, we followed Captain J. T. E. Odom’s Company F, identified by Edwin Ferguson simply as “men from Sumner County.”

Now we have reached a point where continuing company by company without stopping to explain what happened next would become confusing.

Because in June 1862, the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion ceased to exist.

Its soldiers did not.

A CONFUSING REORGANIZATION

On June 13, 1862, the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was reorganized and combined with McNairy’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry Battalion.

The resulting organization became commonly known as the:

2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

But Confederate military records present us with one of those maddening complications familiar to anyone who has researched Civil War units.

Another regiment was already carried on the rolls at Richmond as the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry.

So this regiment was officially designated the:

22nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

That means descendants researching the same Sumner County soldier may find him described as serving in the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry in one source and the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry in another.

Both can be correct.

AND THE COMPANY LETTERS CHANGED

The reorganization went deeper than the regimental number.

Companies were combined and redesignated.

For the Sumner County men we have been following, that is critically important.

Captain Odom’s old Company F was consolidated with the old Company E.

Together they became:

Company G of the new 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

The old Companies A and C became the new Company D.

Old Company B became Company E.

Captain Griffin’s old Company D became Company F.

Suddenly, the familiar company letters we have been using no longer meant what they had meant a few days earlier.

FOLLOW THE MAN — NOT JUST THE UNIT

This is where Civil War genealogy can become treacherous.

Imagine finding an ancestor listed in late 1861 as:

Company F, 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion.

Then several months later you find what appears to be a man with the same name in:

Company G, 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

Later still, another record calls his organization:

Company G, 22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

It is tempting to assume he transferred twice.

He may never have transferred at all.

The army changed his unit around him.

That is why understanding these reorganizations matters.

We are not merely following regiments.

We are following Sumner County men.

SOME OF THEIR OFFICERS DID NOT CONTINUE

There was another consequence of the June reorganization.

Confederate companies operated under a system in which soldiers elected many of their officers.

Reorganization meant new elections.

And according to Ferguson, many of the officers of the old 7th Battalion had no desire to submit themselves to another vote.

Lieutenant Colonel James D. Bennett, Major Baxter Smith, all of the captains, and several lieutenants went home.

That meant men who had enlisted together under familiar local leaders suddenly found themselves serving in a larger regiment under a different command structure.

The transformation from local volunteer company to increasingly professional Confederate cavalry was underway.

THE WAR WAS CHANGING TOO

The timing was significant.

When these men had enlisted in 1861, much of their service had been close to home.

They scouted through Macon County and southern Kentucky.

They guarded supplies at Carthage.

They protected the Louisville & Nashville Railroad around Gallatin.

Then came Shiloh.

After the June 1862 reorganization, their war would become much more mobile.

They would serve as part of a full cavalry regiment.

And the regiment would eventually become associated with one of the most famous—and controversial—Confederate cavalry commanders of the war:

Nathan Bedford Forrest.

For the Sumner County horsemen, the little local war they had entered in 1861 was disappearing.

The war ahead would take them across Tennessee and beyond.

FROM SUMNER COUNTY HORSEMEN TO VETERAN CAVALRYMEN

This is therefore a natural dividing line in our story.

We began with individual companies because that was how these men experienced enlistment.

They joined alongside neighbors.

They elected officers they knew.

They brought horses from home.

Their identities were intensely local.

But armies evolve.

By the summer of 1862, these men were becoming part of something larger.

The 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was gone.

In its place stood the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment—officially the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

And scattered through its companies were the men we have been following from:

Gallatin.
Castalian Springs.
Fountain Head.
And communities throughout Sumner County.

The names and numbers had changed.

The men had not.

Now we can follow them into the next phase of their war.

⸻

Much of the information in this series is drawn from Edwin Ferguson’s two-volume history, Sumner County in the Civil War, the product of extraordinary research into the Sumner County men who went to war for their beliefs. This series owes Ferguson an unpayable debt. My hope is simply to bring the stories he preserved to a new audience.

Next — Company G, 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry: Odom’s Sumner County Horsemen Ride On.

History Matters.

09/05/2026

HISTORY MATTERS: SUMNER COUNTY AT WAR

COMPANY F — 7TH TENNESSEE CAVALRY BATTALION

Captain J. T. E. Odom’s Sumner County Horsemen

As we work our way through the companies of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, we have repeatedly seen just how local these organizations were.

One company came from Castalian Springs.

Another from Fountain Head.

And then there was Company F.

Edwin Ferguson identifies it simply:

Captain J. T. E. Odom — Men from Sumner County.

Ferguson does not attach Odom’s company to a particular Sumner County community in the way he does some of the others.

But there is no ambiguity about where these cavalrymen came from.

They were Sumner County men.

MUSTERED AT GALLATIN

The 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion had been organized on November 15, 1861, at Camp Jim Davis at Epperson Springs in Macon County.

The following month the battalion came to Camp Sandy Barnes in Gallatin, where it was mustered into Confederate service.

Company F was commanded by Captain J. T. E. Odom.

For Odom’s men, therefore, the transition from civilian life to Confederate soldier began practically at home.

They did not immediately disappear into some distant theater of war.

Their first campaign would be fought across country they knew.

GUARDING THE TENNESSEE-KENTUCKY BORDER

The battalion’s early assignments took it through Macon County and across the state line into Allen and Monroe Counties, Kentucky, where the cavalry performed scouting and picket duty.

The men also guarded Confederate supplies at Carthage for General Felix Zollicoffer.

This was precisely the sort of work cavalry was expected to perform.

Scout the roads.

Watch enemy movements.

Carry information.

Protect supplies.

Maintain pickets.

And use mobility to cover territory infantry could not.

For Sumner County horsemen, it was a natural military role.

“KEEP THE RR OPEN”

Then the strategic situation changed.

Confederate forces abandoned Bowling Green in February 1862, and the war moved rapidly southward.

The 7th Battalion received orders to protect the Louisville & Nashville Railroad above Gallatin.

That railroad was becoming one of the most important transportation arteries in the Western Theater.

And once again, the war was literally passing through Sumner County.

Odom’s cavalrymen were no longer merely defending Confederate territory in the abstract.

They were helping protect the railroad running through their own home county.

THEN CAME SHILOH

Within weeks, the battalion’s war changed dramatically.

The 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion moved south and participated in the Battle of Shiloh, April 6–7, 1862.

For Odom’s men, consider how quickly their world had changed.

In December they had mustered at Gallatin.

During the winter they had been scouting roads around northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky.

By April they were riding through the smoke and confusion surrounding one of the bloodiest battles Americans had ever fought.

The local war had become a national catastrophe.

And then the Confederate army reorganized them.

COMPANY F DISAPPEARS

On June 13, 1862, the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was reorganized under the Confederate Conscription Act and merged with McNairy’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry Battalion.

The new organization became commonly known as the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

But because another regiment already appeared on the Confederate rolls under that number, Richmond officially designated it the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

Then came the company reorganizations.

And for Odom’s men, the change was substantial.

Companies E and F of the old 7th Battalion were consolidated to form Company G of the new regiment.

Company F ceased to exist.

At least on paper.

THE COMPANY CHANGED. THE MEN REMAINED.

That distinction is becoming one of the central themes of Sumner County at War.

A man might enlist in:

Company F, 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion

and later appear in military records as serving in:

Company G, 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment

or:

Company G, 22nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.

To someone researching him more than 160 years later, it can look as though he left one unit and joined another.

He may have done nothing of the sort.

The Confederate army simply reorganized around him.

The company letter changed.

The regimental designation changed.

His comrades may have changed somewhat when two companies were consolidated.

But he remained in the saddle.

WHY THESE SMALL STORIES MATTER

There were no famous generals commanding Odom’s Company.

There was no great battle named for them.

Ferguson’s description of their origins occupies only a few words:

“Men from Sumner County.”

But those words are exactly why this series exists.

Before they became entries on Confederate muster rolls, they were people who lived here.

They traveled the same roads.

They knew Gallatin.

They knew the farms and communities of Sumner County.

They brought their own horses to war and initially served close enough to home that their families could understand exactly where they were.

Then the war carried them south to Shiloh.

And after June 1862, anyone trying to follow their story must know where to look next.

Company G of the 2nd—or officially 22nd—Tennessee Cavalry.

Different letters.

Different numbers.

The same Sumner County men.

⸻

Much of the information in this series is drawn from Edwin Ferguson’s two-volume history, Sumner County in the Civil War, the product of extraordinary research into the Sumner County men who went to war for their beliefs. This series owes Ferguson an unpayable debt. My hope is simply to bring the stories he preserved to a new audience.

History Matters.

09/04/2026

HISTORY MATTERS: SUMNER COUNTY AT WAR

COMPANY D — 7TH TENNESSEE CAVALRY BATTALION

Captain Micajah Griffin and the Horsemen of Fountain Head

In the last installment of Sumner County at War, we followed Captain Edward P. Tyree and Company C—the cavalrymen from Castalian Springs.

Our next company came from another familiar Sumner County community.

Edwin Ferguson identifies Company D of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion simply:

Captain Micajah Griffin. Men from Fountain Head. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

Today we know the community as Portland.

But when these men rode away to war in 1861, their home was still called Fountain Head.

A CAVALRY COMPANY FROM NORTHERN SUMNER COUNTY

The 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was organized on November 15, 1861, at Camp Jim Davis at Epperson Springs in Macon County.

The following month it was mustered into Confederate service at Camp Sandy Barnes in Gallatin.

Lieutenant Colonel James D. Bennett commanded the battalion, with Baxter Smith as major.

And Company D belonged to Captain Micajah Griffin and his Fountain Head men. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

Like the other Sumner County companies we have been following, they entered a cavalry service particularly suited to the place from which they came.

Sumner County was horse country.

These men had grown up in a landscape where horses were transportation, livelihood, property and pride.

Now those horses were taking them to war.

THEIR FIRST BATTLEFIELD WAS HOME

Company D’s earliest service kept the men remarkably close to Fountain Head.

The battalion scouted and maintained pickets in Macon County, Tennessee, and Allen and Monroe Counties, Kentucky.

For Griffin’s men, those weren’t distant places on a military map.

They were the country immediately surrounding their homes.

The battalion also guarded Confederate supplies at Carthage for General Felix Zollicoffer.

Then, as Confederate forces withdrew from Bowling Green in early 1862, the cavalry received an assignment of enormous importance:

protect the Louisville & Nashville Railroad above Gallatin.

Ferguson records the memorable order:

“To keep the RR open whether they could or not.” Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

For the men of Fountain Head, the strategic war and the local war had become the same thing.

FROM FOUNTAIN HEAD TO SHILOH

Then the battalion went south.

In April 1862, Griffin’s men participated in the Battle of Shiloh.

The transformation must have been extraordinary.

Only months earlier, these cavalrymen had been patrolling the countryside around Sumner County and the Kentucky line.

Now they found themselves amid a battle that shocked the nation with its violence and casualties.

Ferguson records that a member of the battalion was involved in receiving the surrender of men from Union General Benjamin Prentiss’s command. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

Shiloh demonstrated what the war was becoming.

And once again, the identity of the Sumner County unit was about to change.

COMPANY D BECOMES COMPANY F

On June 13, 1862, the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was reorganized and merged with McNairy’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry Battalion.

The resulting regiment became known as the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry, although Confederate records officially designated it the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry because another 2nd Tennessee Cavalry already existed on the Richmond rolls. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

The companies were redesignated.

Old Company B became Company E.

Companies A and C were consolidated as Company D.

And Captain Griffin’s old Company D became Company F of the new 2nd/22nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

Once again, a company disappeared from the rolls without its soldiers necessarily disappearing from the war.

THE OFFICERS GO HOME

The reorganization created another problem.

Confederate soldiers elected their company officers.

Reorganization meant new elections.

Ferguson tells us that many of the existing officers wanted no part of going through that process again. Lieutenant Colonel Bennett, Major Smith, all of the captains, and several lieutenants went home. Sumner County in the Civil War - Chapter Eleven Co. F, 2nd TN Cav.pdf

That would have included Captain Micajah Griffin.

The company he had led from Fountain Head continued.

But it continued under another designation and new leadership.

A NAME ON A MUSTER ROLL — A COMMUNITY AT WAR

That is why these little company histories are worth recovering.

“Company D, 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion” sounds remote.

“Men from Fountain Head” does not.

These were neighbors.

Their families knew one another.

Their horses had traveled the same Sumner County roads.

They rode from northern Sumner County into Confederate service, guarded the country around their own homes, fought at Shiloh, and then watched the army reorganize their company around them.

After June 1862, anyone trying to follow one of Griffin’s cavalrymen must know to look for him in:

Company F, 2nd Tennessee Cavalry

or, in the official Confederate designation,

Company F, 22nd Tennessee Cavalry.

Different designation.

Same Sumner County men.

And in 1861, their home had a name that is slowly disappearing from local memory:

Fountain Head.

⸻

Much of the information in this series is drawn from Edwin Ferguson’s two-volume history, Sumner County in the Civil War, the product of extraordinary research into the Sumner County men who went to war for their beliefs. This series owes Ferguson an unpayable debt. My hope is simply to bring the stories he preserved to a new audience.

Next: Company F — Captain J. T. E. Odum and another company of Sumner County cavalrymen.

History Matters.

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http://batecamp34.wix.com/batecamp34scv

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