| Perryville,
Kentucky
In mid-July 1862, , commander of the Confederate Army
of Mississippi, moved his army from Tupelo in northeast
Mississippi to Chattanooga, Tennessee. There, after
conferring with Confederate General Kirby Smith, Bragg
and Smith launched their two-pronged "invasion" of
Kentucky. The Confederate commanders hoped to attract
thousands of Kentuckians to the colors, and draw Federal
forces out of Tennessee.
Lack of coordination between Bragg and Smith doomed
the complete success of this venture, but Federal
Army of the Ohio commander Don Carlos Buell did follow
a parallel route in pursuit, albeit a tentative one.
By late September 1862, Buell, Bragg and Smith were
all in northern Kentucky. Bragg, who had been disappointed
with the lack of enthusiasm demonstrated by Kentuckians
to the Confederate presence, installed a Confederate
governor in Frankfort, the state capital. Meanwhile
Buell, spurred on by the threat of being removed from
command, started his army forward from Louisville
in search of Bragg.
Distracted by a Federal diversion, Bragg paid little
attention to the approach of Buell's 60,000-man army
towards Perryville and the 16,000 Confederate forces
commanded by General Leonidas Polk. The night of October
7, 1862, elements of both forces fought over water
rights at Doctor's Creek.
The hotly-contested Battle of Perryville, October
8, 1862, pitted Buell's Army of the Ohio against portions
of Bragg's Army of Mississippi. Bragg, who arrived
at Perryville the morning of October 8, decided to
attack the Federal left.
Buell intended to attack with his entire force,
but orders didn't reach the commanders in time and
they were late in getting underway. In the end, one
entire corps under Thomas T. Crittenden did not even
get in the fight, but sat intimidated by Confederate
cavalry on the southern part of the battlefield.
The battle swayed back and forth, with the fiercest
fighting taking place in the northern sector where
Benjamin Cheatham's Confederates struggled against
the Federals of Alexander McCook's I Corps. In the
center, aggressive Federal division commander Philip
Sheridan drove back Confederates toward the town of
Perryville, and one Federal brigade under Colonel
William Carlin, who moved to support Sheridan, even
charged into the streets of the town.
The battle ended at dark, with the Federals having
taken the worst of it: 4,211 casualties to 3,3396
in losses for the Confederates. Although Bragg's army
suffered less than Buell's, the Confederate commander
realized he faced the entire Army of the Ohio, and
ordered an immediate retreat. In the end, neither
side gained much at the Battle of Perryville. "If
it had been two men wrestling it could have been called
a 'dog fall,'" one Confederate wrote later, "Both
sides claiming the victory - both whipped."
The
Civil War Preservation Trust has committed $391,000
toward the purchase of nearly 900 acres at the site
of the largest Civil War battle in Kentucky.
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