I have your book and will get to reading it very soon. I am president of the Clarksville, Tn Civil War Roundtable and am doing a lot of research on the area for my files and for a Blue & Gray magazine cover story on Clarksville in the Civil War.

As such, I have done quite a bit on the activities of guerrillas in Montgomery County and surrounding areas but your note here mentions an upcoming book on this. Do you have the name of that book?

As you probably know, Frank Cooling's book, the second of his Donelson area trilogy, entitled "Fort Donelson's Legacy" which covers much of the cavalry raids in the Clarksville area as well as guerrilla activity. I consider this book a real classic on the war in the western theater.

With regards to Thomas Woodward and his command that held Palmyra for a time in April 1863 (using earthworks built by Forrest in late January 1863 - they are still there) there's a few misconceptions about him and his commands. First, Woodward was not a partisan - he was a regularly enrolled soldier in the Confederate Army dating to the spring of 1861. He raised the Oak Grove Rangers, in Oak Grove, KY, right across the border from Clarksville, TN. This company expanded into a two company battalion and was absorbed into the 1st Kentucky Cavalry (Helm's) for one year. In the spring of 1862, as these enlistments expired and the regiment dissolved, Woodward came back into the Clarksville, TN/Hopkinsville, KY area to recruit a new command. In August 1862, this new command, formally known only as Woodward's KY Battalion, joined with the also then forming 10th Kentucky Cavalry (Partisan Rangers) of Adam Rankin Johnson, to attack and capture Clarksville, TN from the six companies of the 71st Ohio Infantry that were the garrison. Johnson had raised this regiment under the Confederate Partisan Rangers Act of April 1862. The regiment became part of Morgan's raid into Ohio where it was destroyed. Johnson reformed it later on.

After a few days rest, these troops then went after the other four 71st Ohio companies holding Dover. Johnson was called back into Kentucky to deal with a Federal incursion at Madisonville taking but a few of his men with him, so Woodward was in command of the combined force. His attack was repulsed and the men fell back to Clarksville. A couple weeks later, in early September, a brigade under Union Colonel William Lowe including his own 5th Iowa Cavalry, the 13th Wisconsin, the 11th Illinois Infantry and the four companies of the 71st Ohio plus four guns from two Illinois batteries, drove towards Clarksville to take it back. They fought Woodward at Riggins Hill and New Providence and drove him back into and through Clarksville, which returned to Federal hands. After a few days, Lowe's troops abandoned the town and it remained unoccupied by either side until Christmas Day, 1862 when Col. Sanders Bruce came into town with a 2300 man brigade. From this point on, Clarksville was heavily garrisoned by the Federals for the rest of the war.

Woodward's KY Battalion served through the end of 1862, fighting with Forrest in his West Tennessee Raid and at Parker's Crossroads. After this, that command fell apart and he used a core of it to form the 15th Kentucky Cavalry. Woodward raised it as the 2nd KY Cavalry but the first 2nd Kentucky Cavalry had been formed much earlier under John Hunt Morgan. So when the paperwork reached the War Department in Richmond, they renumbered Woodward's regiment as the 15th (numbers 3 through 14 being already taken as well). So the official name for this regiment is the 15th Kentucky Cavalry and not the 2nd (even though Woodward continued to call it that.

As far as Woodward's attack on Palmyra in April 1863, from the Official Records I found this:

OR I, Vol. 52, Part 2, Page 470-471 - General Orders No. 12 from Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson, May 9, 1863, Spring Hill, Tennessee, which state:

"The brilliant and successful achievements of Lt. Col. Thomas Woodward of the First Brigade and his brave command, in their recent operations on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, elicit the grateful thanks of the brigadier-general commanding, and entitle them to the gratitude of their countrymen. With merely a handful of men, consisting of his own Kentucky regiment, Major White's Texas Battalion and a section of King's Missouri battery, he has in six week's time sunk two gunboats, burned and sunk four armed transports and crippled six others, killing 157 of the enemy besides capturing and wounding a large number, and destroying a quarter of a million dollars of property."

Major White was killed in this raid. In retaliation, a Union naval squadron under Leroy Fitch attacked and burned Palmyra to the ground. A week or so later when the Union brigade of Col. Abel Streight arrived in Palmyra to secure mules for their upcoming raid into Alabama, one of the soldiers made note of the devastation of the town stating that all that was left were the chimneys.

So it is incorrect to call Woodward or his troops partisans, which is more often units raised of irregular civilians like guerrillas (at least they were called that by their Union foes). He and his troops were properly raised and enrolled units of the Confederate Army. Johnson's 10th Cavalry was also done this way (as were a number of Tennessee cavalry regiments raised under the Partisan Rangers Act) and these regiments were converted in name into regular CS cavalry later on.

The bad thing about trying to research Thomas Woodward is that he left no written reports that have been found. The only notices of him in the Official Records come from his CS superiors or Federals who report about him. What I have learned came from the records of the KY Adjutant General which were especially helpful for the commands he raised.

Hope this has been helpful.

Greg Biggs
Clarksville CWRT