Legends of the Legion

They are forgotten men now. They are ancestors, the subjects of genealogical research. They are faceless, former soldiers for a nation which lost the only war it ever fought and probably didn’t exist anyway, legally.

          These men were Confederate soldiers. Some survived America’s Civil War, others did not. Their common thread is that they served in Hilliard’s Legion, an Alabama outfit which was formed in 1862, shot to pieces in September of 1863 while part of the Army of Tennessee and then split into three different units the following November.

Confederate marker for Henry H.
Hines. Photo by R. E. Elder

          The three new units, the 23^rd Alabama Sharpshooters Battalion, the 59^th Alabama Infantry Regiment and the 60^th Alabama Infantry Regiment, eventually joined Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and fought with that force until Lee surrendered in 1865.

          Of interest here is the fact that while many of Hilliard’s soldiers died before the Legion even reached the September 19-20, 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, where still more Legionnaires were killed or wounded, large numbers of those who did not serve beyond the killing ground at Chickamauga are still listed on the rolls of the 23^rd, 59^th and 60^th.

          John Henry Holt, for example, was buried in Montgomery, Alabama. A Lieutenant Colonel in the First Battalion of Hilliard’s Legion, Holt was struck down at Chickamauga. He succumbed to his wound October 12, 1863, more than a month before the Legion was decommissioned and the successor units went into service with the survivors of Hilliard’s Legion.

          Henry Hilliard Hines, a private in the Legion’s First Battalion, was also wounded at Chickamauga. He survived his Chickamauga wound but was unable to serve again. He returned to farming and died in 1908 without serving a day in the 23^rd Sharpshooters. Yet his tombstone lists his Confederate service as a member of the 23^rd.

          There are many other Legion soldiers with the same story. The bulk of their service, in many cases their entire military career, was as a member of the Legion. Yet they are listed as members of one of the other three units.

          There is no question about the quality of the fighting done by the 23^rd Sharpshooters and that done by the 59^th and 60^th regiments. That combative service was turned in by former members of the Legion, who first performed so magnificently at Chickamauga.

          The Legion earned a lasting place in the history of the Civil War when it stormed to the crest of Chickamauga’s Horseshoe Ridge and pushed the Union forces atop the Ridge away in the waning hours of that engagement.

          The uncertainties of Confederate record keeping may have partially confused and hidden the accomplishment of Hilliard’s Legion. The Legion deserved better.

 

          Thanks for reading.