Battle of Perryville
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The Battle of Perryville was an important but largely neglected encounter in the American Civil War. It was fought on October 8, 1862 in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky. The battle began with a middle-of-the-night skirmish over a source of precious drinking water, and ended more or less by default with the onset of darkness and the retreat of the tactical victor, the Confederates. It marked the end of the Kentucky Campaign of Confederate Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith and, like the campaign, was marked not only by fierce fighting and heroic achievement, but also by indecision, confusion, and futility on both sides:
- It involved one general (Bragg) whose charges would not initially carry out his orders to attack, and another (Union Major General Don Carlos Buell) who did not intend to fight until the following day. Unaware that the battle had begun until it was nearly over, Buell kept more than half his troops aside while the rest fought for their lives.
- It pitted a force of superior numbers (the Union Army of the Ohio), which included troops so green they did not know how to properly aim their artillery, against veteran soldiers (the Confederate Army of the Mississippi) whose commander had badly misjudged the size of their opposition.
- With little direction from their commanders, the soldiers engaged in what some insisted was the most ferocious fighting of the entire war. Following the battle, and for the rest of their lives, both generals were condemned for their poor leadership and mismanagement of their forces.
- The Confederates won a tactical victory by pushing most of the Union forces back from the strategic high ground and sources of water over which they fought, but they immediately abandoned the land they had gained at such a high price when they realized they had been opposed by less than half of the Union troops in the area.
The Confederate "victory" marked the end of their last offensive campaign in the West, and their retreat left the border state of Kentucky under the control of the Union Army for the rest of the war.
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The Kentucky Campaign of 1862
Situated between the Southern states of Tennessee and Virginia and the Northern states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, the border state of Kentucky was coveted by both sides of the conflict because of its central location. So much so, in fact, that in September 1861, Kentucky-born President Abraham Lincoln wrote in a private letter, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”
Opposing viewpoints within the state vied for control during the early part of the war, and while the state never seceded from the Union, a Confederate capital was set up in Bowling Green in November, 1861. This prompted recognition of Kentucky by the Confederate States and the addition of a star representing Kentucky to the Confederate flag. (Stuart Sanders; 1860-1861, Cultural Heritage, Kentucky Tourism [1] (http://www.kytourism.com/cw1860-1861.aspx))
The initiative to invade Kentucky came primarily from Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, then commander of the Department of East Tennessee. He believed the campaign would allow them to obtain supplies, enlist recruits, divert Union troops from Tennessee, and claim Kentucky for the Confederacy. Smith, established as an independent commander by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Bragg, designated commander of the Army of the Mississippi by Davis, met together in Chattanooga on July 31 and devised a plan for the campaign: The newly-created Army of Kentucky, including two of Bragg's brigades and approximately 21,000 men, would march north under Smith's command into Kentucky. They would begin to oppose the Union troops there, while Bragg would travel west to oppose Buell's Army of the Ohio and try to recapture Nashville. Later, the two would reunite near Lexington for a final advance across the state.
Bragg, however, suffered from chronic indecision and a constant desire for more men. After Smith left Chattanooga on August 13, Bragg changed his mind. Instead of advancing on Nashville to retake the city from Buell as planned, he wanted to turn north into Kentucky to rejoin Smith, but only if he could avoid facing Buell, who was advancing on Chattanooga from the west.
Meanwhile, Buell was having his own difficulty sticking with any particular plan for very long. Instead of continuing toward Chattanooga, he decided to fall back to defend Nashville. When Bragg realized Buell would no longer be in his way, he crossed the Cumberland River into Kentucky. The news that Smith and Bragg were both in Kentucky suddenly struck Buell with the need to get his army between the Confederates and the Northern cities of Louisville and Cincinnati. On September 7, Buell's Army of the Ohio left Nashville and began racing Bragg to Louisville.
On the way, Bragg was distracted from his objective by the capture of a Union fort at Munfordville. Now, he had to decide again whether to continue toward a fight with Buell (over Louisville) or rejoin Smith, who had gained control of the center of the state by capturing Richmond and Lexington and threatened to move on Cincinnati. He chose to rejoin Smith. This allowed Buell to reach Louisville where the Union general gathered, reorganized and reinforced his army with thousands of new recruits. Meanwhile, Bragg met Smith in Frankfort where Bragg believed the main body of the Union army was. There he was able to attend the inauguration of Confederate Governor Richard Hawes on October 4. (Thomas L. Breiner, Bragg's Kentucky Invasion, The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky [2] (http://www.battleofperryville.com/invasion.html))
The battle
On October 1, Buell left Louisville with Major General George Henry Thomas as his second in command. While 20,000 men under Brigadier General Joshua Sill moved toward Frankfort, the Army of the Ohio, with 58,000 troops under Buell and Thomas, advanced toward Bragg's army in Bardstown on three separate roads:
- 1st Corps - Major General Alexander McDowell McCook - on the left, along the Mackville Road
- 2nd Corps - Major General Thomas Leonidas Crittenden - on the right, along the Lebanon Road
- 3rd Corps - Major General Charles Champion Gilbert - in the center, along the Springfield Pike
When he left for Frankfort on September 28, Bragg left his army of 30,000 soldiers in Bardstown with Major General Leonidas Polk. On October 6, the approach of the large Union force caused the Confederates to withdraw eastward to Perryville.
The area had been afflicted by a drought for months. The heat was oppressive for both men and horses, and the few useful sources of drinking water provided by the rivers and creeks west of town were desperately sought after. On the evening of October 7, Confederate Major General William J. Hardee established a line of defense across the three roads leading into Perryville from the north and west, including Peter's Hill overlooking Doctors Creek.
Hearing there was water in Doctors Creek, a group of Union soldiers from Major General Charles Gilbert's 3rd Corps crossed the creek around 2:00 am, intending to set up a picket line on Peter's Hill. There they encountered Hardee's men, and a skirmish erupted with the Union force pushing the Confederates back.
Around 7:00 am, against Bragg's orders, Polk met with his officers and recommended that, because of the size of the Union opposition, they should assume a defensive strategy. Bragg, in Harrodsburg to gather his men for what he still believed would be the main battle in Frankfort, was concerned by 8:00 am that he did not hear the sound of Polk's attack. Travelling to Perryville himself, but without accurate reports of the strength of the enemy, Bragg insisted that Polk prepare to strike what they believed was the Union left flank on the Mackville Road with Confederate Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham's division.
At 2:00 pm, Cheatham's men crossed the river, climbed the bluffs above it, and attacked Union Major General Alexander McCook's 22,000 soldiers. Confederate Brigadier General Daniel Donelson, leading the center of the attack, quickly realized that his men were striking the center of the Union line, not its flank. Hit hard by Union Captain Charles Parson's artillery on their right, Donelson's men were turned back with heavy losses. Following right behind them, however, Brigadier General George E. Maney's veteran Tennessee fighters began pushing the raw Union forces back in fierce fighting, charging up and over one hill after another. Often, the Union artillery were unable to fire their guns down steeply enough to strike the Confederates as they advanced up the hills and eventually, Maney's men overran and captured Parson's artillery on the Open Knob.
About an hour after the start of Cheatham's attack, Major General Simon Buckner issued revised orders to the men of Confederate Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson. Bragg had intended for them to advance straight ahead to the West against Harris' men, but when Buckner saw the strength of the Union position, he directed Johnson to move slightly to the left to use the hills opposite Doctor's Creek as cover. Unfortunately, not all of Johnson's men received the revised orders and the various brigades advanced in a very disorganized manner. As regiments crossed in front of and behind one another, some moving to the west and some to the southwest, the three left regiments came under attack from a battery located on a hill to their left rear. It was Adams' Confederate brigade who had advanced to the Northwest during and after the midday artillery exchange, become confused about the Federal position, and did not realize that they were attacking their own men!
As McCook's Union 1st Corps experienced fierce fighting and heavy losses, the recently promoted Gilbert continued to give orders to his 3rd Corps officers not to waste artillery ammunition or to advance their men and engage the enemy. Occupied late in the afternoon by an attack from Confederate Colonel Samuel Powell of Major General J. Patton Anderson's division, Gilbert did not provide troops to support McCook's harrowed men.
Throughout the morning and more than half of the afternoon, Buell was shielded from the sound of the fighting by an acoustic shadow, caused by the hilly terrain. He was unaware that his men were engaged in a major battle until he finally learned it from a messenger sent by McCook requesting support from Gilbert's 3rd Corps.
About 5:30 pm, having captured and recaptured Union Colonel John C. Starkweather's Hill, Cheatham's Confederate division finally fell back to the Open Knob as the Union line settled at the Dixville Crossroads. A last attack by Confederate Brigadier General St. John R. Liddell pushed the Union forces back along the Mackville Road until, at last, Union Brigadier General James Steedman arrived from the 3rd Corps in support of McCook, and the attack was halted by the fall of darkness. (Thomas L. Breiner, The Battle of Perryville, The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky [3] (http://www.battleofperryville.com/battle.html))
Casualties
- Union: 845 dead; 2,851 wounded; 515 captured or missing.
- Confederacy: 510 dead; 2,635 wounded; 251 captured or missing.
The retreat
The Confederate forces held their ground until Bragg, finally realizing that the main body of the Union army was in the area, gave the order around midnight to retreat. Buell did not know his opponent had abandoned the field until Crittendon's 2nd Corps moved into Perryville at 10:30 the next morning. He did not begin to follow after them until the following day, October 10. Bragg united his forces with Smith's at Harrodsburg, and the Union and Confederate armies, now of comparable size, shadow boxed with one another over the next week or so but neither attacked.
Bragg soon realized that the sources of help he had hoped for (Robert E. Lee from Virginia, Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price from Mississippi, and new recruits from Kentucky) would not materialize, and he made his way Southeast to Knoxville, Tennessee. He was quickly called to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, to explain to Jefferson Davis the charges brought by his officers about how he had conducted his campaign.
Buell called off his "pursuit" of Bragg and returned to Nashville. On October 24, a change of command structure in the Union army relieved him of his duties and more or less ended his career. (Thomas L. Breiner, The Retreat After The Battle of Perryville, The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky [4] (http://www.battleofperryville.com/retreat.html))
The aftermath
Perryville's homes and farms were left in shambles by the battle. Henry P. Bottom, a prominent secessionist on whose farm a significant portion of the battle was fought, suffered losses of pork, corn, hay and wood to Union soldiers who remained in the area for weeks after the fighting. The main force of the Union army had buried most of their dead in long trenches before pursuing Bragg, but most of the Confederate dead were still unburied a week after the battle. Union soldiers finally forced local residents to help them lay the dead in shallow trenches carved in the dry soil. Two months later, 347 were re-buried in a mass grave on Bottom's land.
At the end of the war in 1865, Union soldiers reburied the remains of 969 Federal dead in a national cemetery at Perryville with a stone wall, two gates and plans for a monument. The monument was never erected, however, and in 1867 the new cemetery was closed and the Federal dead transferred to Camp Nelson in Jessamine County, Kentucky, leaving no identified Federal dead on the field at Perryville.
On the fortieth anniversary of the battle in 1902, a Confederate monument was dedicated in the Confederate cemetery begun by Henry Bottom at the center of the field, and a smaller Federal memorial followed nearby in 1931. The Perryville State Battlefield site was established in 1954 by the Kentucky State Conservation Commission, and a museum and visitor's center were opened near the monuments on the battle's hundredth anniversary in 1962.
For a century following the war, the memory of the Battle of Perryville (and many others fought in the West) was minimized by what has been called the "Lee tradition," which emphasized the deeds of the armies and generals who fought in the East, particularly Virginia. Around the time of the war's centennial, however, a number of scholars worked to establish the importance of the Western campaigns. In recent years, appreciation for what happened at Perryville and other battlefields in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi has grown.
More than 7000 acres (28 km²) at Perryville are now recognized as a National Historic Landmark, and the site averages around 100,000 visitors per year, including a reenactment of the battle each October. The Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association was created in 1991 to preserve, enlarge and protect the park. The acquisition of 149 acres (0.6 km²) of farmland from a descendant of Henry Bottom more than doubled the size of the park and allowed visitors to complete a tour of the entire battlefield.
References
- Kenneth W. Noe (2001). Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2209-0
- Kenneth W. Noe (April 14, 2001). Remembering Perryville: History and Memory at a Civil War Battlefield. History of Perryville Battlefield (http://www.perryvillereenactment.org/pv-noe-hist.php)
External links
- The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky (http://www.battleofperryville.com/)
- History of the Battle of Perryville (http://www.perryville.net/history.html)
- Perryville Battlefield Walking Tour (http://www.danville-ky.com/BoyleCounty/perrywal.htm)