Skirmish, Augusta

On September 27, 1862, forces clashed at Augusta, Kentucky, in what became known as the Battle of Augusta, a Civil War engagement pitting the Bracken County Home Guard, fighting for the Union, against the Confederate Second Kentucky Cavalry Regiment. Colonel Basil W. Duke, related by marriage to John H. Morgan as his brother-in-law, led the Confederate troops in this fight. Though the Confederacy emerged victorious in the skirmish, the cost proved significant enough to alter Duke's broader strategy. Heavy losses among his men, combined with a shortage of ammunition needed for his artillery, forced him to give up his intention of pushing across the Ohio River into Ohio. The clash left its mark on the town itself, as twenty buildings burned to the ground in the fighting's aftermath.

Background

Kentucky occupied a peculiar and prized place in the sectional struggle, wedged between Tennessee and Virginia to the south and Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north. Its position astride vital rivers, the Ohio especially, made it a target both sides wanted badly. Abraham Lincoln, himself born in the state, captured its importance in a September 1861 letter, writing that losing Kentucky would come close to losing everything.

Early in the conflict, rival political factions fought for the state's loyalty, and lawmakers tried to sidestep the whole mess by declaring Kentucky neutral, barring troops from either side. That neutrality lasted only until September 3, 1861, when Confederate Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk moved his forces into Columbus, a town seen as essential for dominating the lower Mississippi. Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant answered two days afterward by taking Paducah, and from that point neutrality existed in name only. Kentucky formally stayed in the Union, yet Confederate-leaning legislators went ahead and set up a rival capital at Bowling Green that November, though it never gained real authority within the state. Richmond nonetheless recognized Kentucky as one of its own, adding a star to the Confederate banner in its honor.

Pushing for an invasion was Confederate Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, who led the Department of East Tennessee. He argued that moving into Kentucky would let his forces gather supplies, draw in new soldiers, pull Union troops away from Tennessee, and ultimately bring the state into the Confederacy. That July, Col. John Hunt Morgan led a cavalry raid deep into territory behind Buell's lines, an operation that rattled both Buell's headquarters and officials in Washington. Local residents often greeted Morgan's riders warmly, and by the raid's end his 900 troopers had picked up another 300 Kentucky recruits. Buoyed by this reception, Morgan assured Kirby Smith that the whole region could be won over, predicting that twenty five to thirty thousand men would flock to the cause.

Bragg weighed several courses of action, among them striking back at Corinth, Mississippi, or pushing against Buell directly through Middle Tennessee. In the end he answered Kirby Smith's appeals and committed to bringing his Army of Mississippi north to combine forces. Some 30,000 of his infantry endured a roundabout rail trip running from Tupelo through Mobile and Montgomery before reaching Chattanooga, while wagons, cavalry, and guns made their own overland trek through Rome, Georgia. Bragg outranked everyone else in the theater, yet Jefferson Davis had made Kirby Smith's department answer straight to Richmond rather than to Bragg, an arrangement that would cause friction as the campaign unfolded.

At Chattanooga on July 31, 1862, the two generals hammered out their strategy. Kirby Smith, leading a newly formed Army of Kentucky of roughly 21,000 men that included two borrowed brigades from Bragg, would push northward to clear Union defenders from Cumberland Gap, since Bragg's own troops needed rest after their grueling journey. Afterward Kirby Smith would rejoin Bragg, and together they would try to slip behind Buell and force him into a battle meant to protect his own supply lines. Meanwhile, should Grant try to send reinforcements up from northern Mississippi, the smaller Confederate armies under Maj. Gens. Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn would deal with that threat.

Once united, command would fall to Bragg by virtue of rank, with Kirby Smith serving under him. The plan assumed Buell's army could be crushed, after which the combined Confederate force would drive north into Kentucky, expecting

Battle

Shortly after midday, Basil Duke's Confederate command marched in from Brooksville and took up positions on the high ground above Augusta. Down on the Ohio River sat two Union gunboats, the Florence Miller and the Belfast, and the crew of the latter unleashed between three and five rounds from its twelve-pounder howitzer toward the assembling Confederates, wounding several members of a gun crew. Answering fire came from a pair of Confederate six-pounder mountain howitzers, nicknamed the "bull pups," which struck the vessels and rattled their captains considerably. Duke then sent his advance guard along with Company A toward a sandbar east of town on the river. When the gunboat officers spotted these men descending the hillside and realized their poorly protected craft, the Belfast's boiler shielded by nothing more than a layer of hay, might suffer real damage from Confederate cannon, they pulled both boats upstream and away from Augusta. As they retreated, riflemen on the sandbar riddled the Florence Miller with gunfire, leaving it pocked with more than 150 holes.

With the naval threat removed, Duke believed victory was within easy reach and pushed Companies B and C forward into Augusta itself. Roughly 150 townspeople, organized as a Home Guard, had already taken refuge inside the brick structures scattered through town, many climbing to upper floors to fire down at the advancing Confederates and inflicting heavy losses among their officers. When the men stationed at the sandbar heard the commotion of battle erupting in town, they rushed back on horseback, only to be struck by their own artillery firing down from the hills above, since they had been ordered to fight dismounted and their gunners mistook the mounted riders for Union soldiers.

The engagement grew brutal, with soldiers reportedly locked in close combat, and Duke noticed that while some among the Home Guard raised white flags, others kept firing from the buildings. He responded by ordering one of the bull pup howitzers brought into the streets to blast the defenders' positions at close range. Between this bombardment and deliberate acts of arson by Confederate troops, numerous structures went up in flames, and some Home Guard members perished, trapped and burned inside.

Duke had hoped to accomplish two things: disrupt the recruitment of a Federal Kentucky regiment in the region, one that Taylor was slated to command, and push across the Ohio River to menace Cincinnati. Instead, with his artillery ammunition running perilously low, he was forced to withdraw back toward Brooksville.

The next morning, while Duke was busy paroling captured soldiers at Brooksville, a separate Federal force struck his position. The resulting clash proved minor, producing just a single casualty, and Duke managed to pull his men back safely to Falmouth.