Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island Light Artillery — Background and Themes

From the Potomac to the Cumberland

The opening pages trace Battery D's movements through the shifting command structures of 1862–1863. Parker notes that the battery served under McDowell, Pope, McClellan, and Burnside before being transferred from the First to the Ninth Army Corps. The march west is described as “not unpleasant,” combining rail and steamboat travel. The battery reached Lexington, Kentucky, on March 30, 1863, and camped at the Fair Grounds. After a week, it moved to Camp Dick Robinson, then to Somerset near the Cumberland River, arriving on May 7. The narrative emphasizes the long waits: the battery remained at Somerset until June 7, and the advance into East Tennessee was delayed until August 21 due to orders diverting troops to Vicksburg and John Morgan's raid.

Exhaustion and Improvisation on the Retreat

Parker provides a detailed account of a night retreat toward Knoxville, where darkness and exhaustion forced improvisation. He writes that it was “so dark that one could not see twenty-five yards.” Mules hauling a fifth piece refused to move, planting their feet “firm as Gibraltar.” Parker decided to run the guns back by hand rather than try to move the mules. The cannoneers were so tired that he allowed them to take turns riding on the limbers. They had not slept for thirty hours and had eaten little besides corn bread. The section reached Knoxville at 5 a.m. and camped near Fort Saunders, an unfinished rebel earthwork renamed Fort Loudon by the Confederates.

Rivalry with the Ohio Battery

A recurring theme is the rivalry between Battery D and an Ohio battery attached to the Twenty-third Army Corps. Parker writes that the Ohioans “overlapped us in foraging,” and the Rhode Island men felt the Ohio unit was “composed principally of the porcine element.” At Campbell's Station, the Ohio battery initially enjoyed raking the rebel lines, but when rebel artillery opened fire and a caisson exploded, the captain limbered up and retreated toward Knoxville at a trot. Parker's men joked that the Ohioans were “after hogs, poultry and sheep.” He concludes that had the Ohio battery seen as much service as the Ninth Corps, “they never would have done as they did.” The episode serves as a pointed comment on the difference between veteran and green troops.

Parker's account is a narrow, ground-level view of one battery's experience in a single campaign. Readers should note that the narrative was written fifty years after the events, from a paper delivered to a veterans' society, and likely reflects both memory and the desire to settle old scores. The text is richest in its depiction of daily hardships—mule troubles, short rations, and the sharp humor of soldiers under stress. Those seeking a broader strategic picture will need to supplement this with other sources.

That rainy afternoon, Parker’s account of hungry artillerymen scrounging through Kentucky made me restless, so I drifted to the shelf and pulled down The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. 06 — Context and Discussion. Different war, same quiet desperation—men writing letters for gunpowder instead of rations. The rain kept falling, and I simply kept reading.