970

HISTORY OF THE ORPHAN BRIGADE.

(now six populous and flourishing States of the Union), and they took part also in the war of 1812.

He was prepared for college by the schools of his home city. Entering Asbury University in 1S56 he graduated there four years afterward with the degree of A. M. Making choice of the law as a profession, he began his preparatory reading and study with Capt. Phil B. Thompson ; but the great sectional trouble was soon agitating the country, and the mind and heart of the ardent young Kentuckian were at once enlisted in behalf of the South, and he gave himself more to military exercises and the study of tactics than to the subtleties of the law. In September, 1S61, he was mustered into the First Kentucky Cavalry by Col. Ben Hardin Helm, and having already acquired some reputation as a tactician, was immediately assigned by Gen. Hardee to duty as drillmaster, and sent to Gallatin, Tenn., to organize and drill the Bennett Battalion of Cavalry. He remained with this command till a short time before the battle of Shiloh, when Hardee ordered him to report for duty to Gen. Beall, commanding cavalry in Sidney Johnston's army; took part in the great battle of April 6 and 7, 1862, where he received his first wound   a shot in the left wrist.

On Gen. Hardee's recommendation he was ordered by the Richmond War Office to enlist a cavalry regiment in Kentucky during Bragg's occupation of the State. He reported to Gen. Kirby Smith at Lexington, who assigned him to duty as major of the regiment then being organized by Col. J. Russell Butler, in which capacity he was active during the remainder of the Kentucky campaign and in the cavalry operations around Murfreesboro' preceding the battle of Stone River. On the first day of this battle, Dec. 31, 1862, he led the escort of Gen. Buford (of whose brigade his regiment was a part), when it captured the celebrated "Anderson troop" from Philadelphia (about one hundred strong). Anderson's magnificent black charger, no longer serviceable to him, Maj. Chenoweth at once appropriated to his own use; but about an hour afterward, while leading in a charge of the brigade, he was shot off his back. He was not permanently disabled, and when the Butler men became a part of the First Kentucky Cavalry he was assigned as major of the new organization.

About the middle of September, 1863, a court-martial of which he was a member was sitting at Rome, Ga,; but when it became evident that the battle of Chickamauga was imminent, he promptly took leave of that judicial body and hurried to the front. He was in all the engagements of his regiment on that field and was wounded on the chin ; was in the fight in Sequatchie "Valley, October 2d, and after Lieut.-Col. Griffith was wounded, he took command and led his regiment during the remainder of Wheeler's raid in the rear of Rosecrans' position.