As I have studied Campbell County men who served in the Civil War, I have learned quite a bit, including about battles that I had never seen much about previously. One such contest was the First Battle of Murfreesboro, a July 13, 1862, birthday victory for then-Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate troops, described in that link as “the first significant operation behind Federal lines in the western theater,” a success that “catapulted Forrest to great renown and a promotion to brigadier general,” while interrupting Union operations against Chattanooga and communication in middle Tennessee.
The Confederate triumph at this lightly
guarded city, “a strategic supply depot on the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad,” for the Federals, may have also enabled General Braxton Bragg to take the time to concentrate his band of Rebels for a campaign into Kentucky which ended at the
Battle of Perryville three months later.
I found out about this contest while
exploring the life of Frank Brinkman, a bugler in the Union army and a
postwar resident of Campbell County.
Frank was born on November 21, 1840, in
Bremen, Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1859. He became one of
numerous German natives who fought for the Federal government, including
several I have uncovered in my own research.
When the Civil War began two years after
his arrival, he enlisted in company A of the 4th Kentucky Cavalry on
September 25, 1861, in Louisville, mustering into the regiment as a bugler in
December. He stood 5 feet 8 inches tall, and had a fair complexion, light hair,
and blue eyes.
The 4th Kentucky Cavalry included
“the second largest contingent of Germans in a Kentucky regiment. Perhaps
this shared heritage was the reason he joined this particular unit.1
Frank’s regiment remained in the
western theater of the war after its organization. It spent much of its time in
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, seeing action in various battles and
campaigns including the Tullahoma Campaign in mid-1863, the Battle of Chickamauga
in September of that year, and the Atlanta Campaign throughout the spring and
summer of 1864.
During the inglorious action at
Murfreesboro, Frank became one of the about 800 to 1,200 Union soldiers
captured by Forrest’s men. The victors quickly paroled their captured enemies,
obligating them not to fight again until an official exchange between the
two armies went into effect. Frank spent time at Camp Chase in Ohio awaiting
exchange, but when he was exchanged on January 20, 1863, he chose to desert the
army instead of returning to his unit.2
Good fortune was on his side, though, as
he was able to remain away from the army for a few months until Abraham Lincoln
issued a proclamation of amnesty in early 1863, allowing soldiers who were
absent without leave to return to their unit with no punishment except the loss
of pay for their time away. Frank took advantage of this opportunity and
returned to the regiment on April 15.
The rest of his military days were less eventful. In early 1864, he re-enlisted in the unit as a Veteran Volunteer and received promotion to Chief Bugler of the entire regiment around the same time.
He served out his remaining term and
mustered out of the army on August 21, 1865, in Macon, Georgia.
In his postwar years, he lived in Newport by 1870, working as a steamboat cook. He married Elizabeth Moeller in 1876, and the couple had at least three children before she passed away in 1901. He also worked as a bridge contractor in these decades.
Frank died of diabetes on June 21, 1916,
at home on Retreat Street in Southgate. His obituary described him as an “Ohio
River sailor and commander, and for many years collector on the Central Bridge”
who had “plied the Ohio River for more than a half century,” perhaps including
some of the hyperbole that obituaries of the time often employed. It mentioned
his service in the war, claiming he had lived through “four years and 31 days
of actual war experience,” probably another slight exaggeration, and had been
an “active member” of the William Nelson Post of the Grand Army of the Republic
ever since that post’s formation. 3,4
The G.A.R. post conducted his funeral at
his home, and the funeral procession carried his body to its final resting
place in the Union soldiers’ section at Evergreen Cemetery, just a few hundred
yards from his home.
1Reinhart, Joseph R. A History of the 6th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry,
U.S. The Boys who Feared no Noise. Beargrass Press 2000. Accessed via https://www.usgenwebsites.org/KYCampbell/germanscivilwar.htm, July 9, 2023.
4Kentucky Post, June 23, 1916
