Col. Joel Battle
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Part 1
At the time of the Civil War, Col. Joel Allen Battle was one of Middle Tennessee’s most beloved military commanders.
He led the 20th Tennessee Infantry, a regiment well documented in “History of the Twentieth Tennessee Infantry Regiment, C.S.A.” by W. J. McMurray. And before that, he led a group of Tennessee volunteers south to Florida for the Second Seminole War.
McMurray wrote of Battle’s generosity in the years before the Civil War.
“Nothing that he possessed was too dear to lay at the feet of a friend in distress. Noble, generous, and brave to a fault, the big heart seemed always looking for some kind act to perform. He was by nature far above the average man. He was a near neighbor of my widowed mother, and I can as a boy count a number of kind acts that he rendered her and her children,” McMurray wrote.
Battle lived in the Cane Ridge community near the Rutherford/Davidson County border. The owner of a huge estate, he was also a major slave owner.
Orphaned at an early age, Battle married the daughter of a prominent Rutherford County family, Sarah Searcy, when he was 19. She died two years later giving birth to a son, William Searcy Battle, who would later follow his father to war only to die during the Battle of Shiloh.
The widowed Battle raised a military company in the Cane Ridge area to volunteer for the Second Seminole Indian War, also called the Florida War. In 1835 he was elected brigadier-general of the Tennessee militia.
After returning from Florida, Battle met and married Adeline Sanders Mosley, “a lady who was remarkable alike for her native refinement, her firm, Christian character, and her gentle lovable disposition,” McMurray said. Together, they would have seven children.
Among those children was a girl, whose fame would eventually eclipse that of her father, who was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly and emerged as a popular Whig party leader. Her name was Mary Frances “Fannie” Battle, whose humanitarian efforts are still celebrated today in Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
In April 1861, Joel Battle raised an infantry company at Nolensville and named them the “Zollicoffer Guards,” in honor of Felix Zollicoffer, a Whig newspaperman turned general. Battle had fought with him in the Florida war.
Battle’s company joined with nine others to form the 20th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. Battle’s company was Company B of the 20th. He was voted colonel of the regiment and at age 50 was referred to as “the Grand Old Man.” By the end of the summer of 1861, the regiment was part of a brigade commanded by Zollicoffer himself at Knoxville.
They were with Zollicoffer when he was killed at Fishing Creek in Kentucky. Battle’s regiment was decimated. Out of 400 men, 133 were killed or wounded.
Seeing his men attempting to dodge the minie balls being shot at them, Battle ordered, “Don’t dodge men, don’t dodge!” But Battle himself ducked when an artillery shell screamed past, making his men laugh despite being under fire. He amended his order to “Boys, dodge the big ones, but don’t dodge the little ones.”
Battle’s youngest son, Joel Jr., was wounded at Fishing Creek, but was still serving as regiment adjutant when the regiment next went into action at Shiloh with Statham’s brigade of Gen. John C. Breckinridge’s division. Again, the 20th experienced heavy casualties. Out of the 380 men, 158 were killed and wounded.
Among the dead were Joel Battle Jr. and the colonel’s oldest son, William Searcy Battle. The colonel was seriously wounded as well and was captured while looking for his sons’ bodies on the battlefield.
Battle was transported to the Federal prisoner of war camp at Johnson’s Island near Sandusky, Ohio. The body of his oldest son was never found and was presumed buried in a mass grave. The body of Joel Jr. was discovered by a Union burial detail composed of soldiers that had been classmates at Miami University in Ohio. The Union soldiers made a coffin out of hardtack boxes and buried him under a huge oak tree on the battlefield.
Shiloh was the elder Battle’s final field assignment.
After his exchange in the fall of 1862, Gov. Isham G. Harris appointed him Tennessee state treasurer, a post he held until the end of the war.
But that wasn’t the extent of the family’s contribution to the Confederate war effort.
A third son, Frank Battle, fought with the 20th Tennessee and particularly distinguished himself at Stones River where he saved the regimental colors during Breckinridge’s charge and was commended for his bravery.
“It was here that Frank Battle, carrying the colors, found them so badly shot and torn as to be hard to handle, and having gone some fifty yards in advance, dropped down, the colors falling on him. We thought he was killed, and Capt. W.T. Ridley rushed out to get the colors but Frank jumped up and commenced to wave them. He had only been tieing the fragments together,” McMurray wrote.
Lashing the flags to what remained of the flagpole, Battle wrapped the remainder around his body and ran back to the forefront of the Confederate lines.
Eventually captured by Union forces, Battle had the misfortune to get caught up in the controversy involving Capt. Shad Harris, an East Tennessee Yankee serving in the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.). Rebel authorities put Harris in irons and threatened to hang him as a spy. Federal authorities then used Battle as leverage, putting him in irons and promising to execute him if Harris was sentenced to death. He was selected for this indignity because his father was serving as treasurer of the state of Tennessee and was politically prominent like Harris’s father was in East Tennessee.
It took long months to resolve the issue, but eventually Harris and Battle were released in 1864 following a prisoner exchange endorsed by President Lincoln.
A former prisoner of war himself, Col. Battle had already dealt with the arrest and imprisonment of his daughter, Fannie, as a Confederate spy.
The 19-year-old Fannie and her friend Harriet Booker were arrested in Nashville and quickly transported to a Northern prison, Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio. It didn’t take long for a flurry of letters to follow.
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