General Kilpatrick's Five Days in the Brown House

by Louise Pettus

On February 22, 1865 a few weary soldiers from Butler's and Wheeler's Confederate Cavalry rode into Lancaster. The women of the town served them heaping plates and "Confederate Coffee" and then sadly waved them goodby.

The next day Federal calvarymen, estimated as between 75 and 100, under the command of Gen. Judson Kilpatrick entered Lancaster with flags flying and a band playing "Dixie."

Several weeks earlier Kilpatrick 's men were issued large quantities of matches and had been ordered to burn every plantation house they came to. They had burned the town of Barnwell but were driven out of Aiken when they tried to burn it. Kilpatrick's intention was to use Lancaster as a base until Sherman's main army caught up with him. Meantime the town would be looted and burned as they left it.

Kilpatrick, a West Point graduate, was described by one biographer as a man who made George Custer and J. E. B. Stuart seem dull. He described Kilpatrick as "flamboyant, reckless, tempestuous, and even licentious."

Kilpatrick chose to stay at the spacious home of Daniel W. Brown, who had been severely wounded while with the Confederate 4th Cavalry Battalion. Brown had three large plantations. All were destroyed by the invaders. The family knew that Brown would be executed if found by the enemy. Lottie Brown, then 15, many years later wrote: "My father hesitated about leaving home but my mother insisted that he should leave us to our fate, and God's providential care."

Lottie recalled that she was standing in a high back porch, facing the old Methodist church, when she saw the troops arrive on Main Street. It was only a few minutes before they "ransacked every nook and cranny of the house." The dairy and smokehouse were special targets. The raiders then moved on to the next house.

Lottie well-remember her oldest sister seeing that only a few hundred pounds of flour were left in the dairy. She "had the house-girls bring two sacks full, and put them under an iron bedstead, then took her seat on the bed; and it was well she did, for another crowd ["bummers"] who seemed worse than the first, came. Many of them seemed drunk, to me. . . .The second [crowd] looked for flour and came to the bedroom where my sister sat, and asked for it. She pointed to the door, and said: 'No go on; you have it all.' And they turned away, never once suspecting her of having hidden it under the bed." The servants were searched to see if they were hiding valuables on their bodies.

Then staff officers came and selected the Brown house as Kilpatrick's headquarters. The Brown family and an adjutant-general were ordered to stay on the first floor. General Kilpatrick occupied a front upstairs room and "a woman handsome and tall, who wore fine clothes, occupied the room opposite his, and his officers the other two."

Lottie said that when "common solders" began poking the ground with iron rods searching for their valuables, her mother took out the servants, and while the soldiers watched, had them dig up their nice china and take it back into the house.

The hams had been hidden in an ash barrel but did not fare so well as the china. A soldier's horse was hitched to it and continually shook and pulled at the barrel staves. "Finally the whole thing came, with the hams on display to the gaping crowds."

Lottie (and Lancaster's) ordeal lasted for five days. Just as Kilpatrick's men were in the act of setting fire to the court house and the jail, remnants of Wheeler's cavalry returned and entered Lancaster from the north. Some 10 or 12 Confederates surprised and dispersed 40 to 50 Union troops, who abandoned their loot and "skedaddled" out of town, according to Allison Chance, an eye-witness.