Mill Springs

On January 19, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near what is now the unincorporated community of Nancy, Kentucky, in a fight that spanned Wayne and Pulaski counties. Northerners called this Civil War engagement the Battle of Logan's Cross Roads or the Battle of Somerset, while Southerners referred to it as the Battle of Fishing Creek; today it is generally remembered as Mill Springs. The Union triumph brought an end to a Confederate push into south central Kentucky that had begun earlier that offensive season.

The roots of the clash reached back to late 1861, when Confederate Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer held Cumberland Gap, marking the eastern anchor of a defensive line stretching from Columbus, Kentucky. That November, he pushed westward to tighten his grip on the Somerset area, eventually settling his men into winter quarters at Mill Springs, a location he judged defensible. Meanwhile, Union commander Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas received instructions to dismantle the army led by Maj. Gen. George B. Crittenden, who outranked Zollicoffer, with the goal of pushing Confederate forces back across the Cumberland River. Thomas's men reached Logan's Crossroads on January 17, 1862, and there he paused, awaiting the arrival of Brig. Gen. Albin Schoepf's troops marching from Somerset.

Before dawn broke on January 19, Crittenden's Confederates launched their assault against Thomas's position at Logan's Crossroads, unaware that a portion of Schoepf's command had already slipped in to bolster the Union line. Initial momentum favored the attackers, but Union troops steadied themselves, and during the fighting Zollicoffer fell dead. When Confederate forces mounted a second assault, it too failed to break through. Union soldiers then pressed forward with counterattacks against both flanks of the Confederate line, driving the enemy from the battlefield altogether and sending them retreating all the way to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This engagement stood as the first major Union triumph of the conflict, drawing considerable attention and praise in newspapers of the day. Its fame proved short-lived, however, as it was quickly overshadowed by Ulysses S. Grant's subsequent triumphs at Forts Henry and Donelson.

Background

Kentucky, a border state whose loyalties carried enormous weight for the Union cause, had proclaimed itself neutral in 1861 as war broke out. That stance did not last. On September 3, Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, following orders from Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk, moved troops into Columbus, and within two days Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant answered by taking Paducah. From that point forward neither side honored Kentucky's declared neutrality, and the Confederacy forfeited an advantage it once held: the state could no longer serve as a protective buffer shielding Tennessee from invasion.

As 1862 began, Confederate command across a vast stretch of territory, from Arkansas to the Cumberland Gap, rested with a single officer, Albert Sidney Johnston. His troops were stretched thin along a long defensive front. Polk anchored the left with 12,000 soldiers stationed at Columbus. In the middle stood Forts Henry and Donelson, the only defenses guarding the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers respectively, held by Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman and roughly 4,000 men. On the right, in Kentucky, Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner commanded 4,000 troops at Bowling Green, while Maj. Gen. George B. Crittenden oversaw about 4,000 more in the Military District of East Tennessee, tasked with holding the Cumberland Gap, the passage into a region loyal to the Union.

Command of Crittenden's 1st Brigade fell to Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer, charged primarily with securing that gap. Believing it already well fortified, he pushed westward into Kentucky in November 1861, seeking to draw nearer to the Confederate force at Bowling Green and tighten control near Somerset. At Mill Springs, the terrain favored defenders on the Cumberland River's southern bank, a high bluff, while the northern side lay flat and exposed. Zollicoffer nonetheless shifted the bulk of his men to that northern bank, wrongly judging it the stronger position and wanting proximity to Union forces nearby. Both Crittenden and Johnston instructed him to pull back south of the river, but he lacked enough boats to ferry his brigade across quickly and feared being caught divided in the middle of the crossing.

Meanwhile, Union Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas was ordered to push Confederate forces back over the Cumberland and dismantle Crittenden's command. Setting out from Lebanon, Thomas advanced cautiously through mud and rain until reaching Logan's Crossroads on January 17, where he paused to await reinforcement from Brig. Gen. Albin F. Schoepf's brigade, then at Somerset. Crittenden, who had lingered at his Knoxville headquarters into early January, finally reached Mill Springs and recognized the peril his inexperienced subordinate faced. He resolved to strike the Union troops before they could unite their strength. At the time, Thomas held three brigades at Logan's Crossroads, while Schoepf's brigade remained separated at Somerset by the swollen waters of Fishing Creek, a divide that might delay their joining forces. Acting on this opportunity, Crittenden directed Zollicoffer to launch an assault on the Union camp at Logan's Crossroads at daybreak on January 19.

Battle

Rain turned the nighttime approach into a miserable slog through mud, leaving Confederate soldiers chilled and exhausted by the time they reached Logan's Crossroads. Many carried outdated flintlock muskets of Napoleonic design, weapons that proved nearly worthless once soaked by the weather. Because the march had taken so long, any hope of catching the enemy unaware was lost.

Even so, Zollicoffer pushed his men forward in a determined assault that met with early gains. Soldiers from the 15th Mississippi Infantry alongside the 19th and 20th Tennessee Infantry regiments drove back elements of the Union's 1st Kentucky Cavalry and 10th Indiana Infantry.

Smoke and shadow filled the timber, and chaos took hold as visibility collapsed. Wearing a white raincoat that made him easy to spot, Zollicoffer rode toward what he thought were his own troops firing on each other, not realizing he had stumbled upon the Union 4th Kentucky Infantry, commanded by Col. Speed S. Fry. He fell there, killed by gunfire that some claimed came from Fry himself. His death, combined with a punishing volley from Fry's men, briefly threw the Confederate center into disarray as it pulled backward. Crittenden managed to steady his forces and pushed both Zollicoffer's brigade and Brig. Gen. William H. Carroll's brigade forward in a fresh advance.

It was at this moment that Thomas reached the field. He sent the 9th Ohio Infantry forward while the 2nd Minnesota Infantry kept up a relentless barrage along the front. Col. Robert L. McCook, leading Thomas's 3rd Brigade, later described the fighting as so close that opposing soldiers and the Minnesota men found themselves jamming rifle barrels through the very same fence rail. Once the 9th Ohio managed to wrap around the Confederate left, the outcome was no longer in doubt.

What followed was collapse. Confederate soldiers scattered in headlong flight toward Mill Springs, and Crittenden, whom some accused of being drunk that day, could do nothing to hold them together. They scrambled across the Cumberland to its southern bank, leaving behind twelve pieces of artillery, roughly 150 wagons, over a thousand horses and mules, and every wounded or dead soldier from their ranks. The flight did not stop until they reached Chestnut Mound, Tennessee, near Carthage, some 50

Aftermath

The fighting itself produced few casualties by the standards of the war. Union forces suffered 39 dead and 207 wounded, while the Confederates counted 125 killed and another 404 wounded or missing. For Crittenden, though, the battle proved costly in a different way, ending his career as a field commander. Facing accusations of drunkenness and treason, he saw his army broken up and himself shifted to a corps command under Buckner at Bowling Green. That posting lasted only two months before he was stripped of command and placed under arrest following another drinking incident. General Braxton Bragg then ordered a court of inquiry, and in October 1862 Crittenden gave up his generalship, spending the rest of the war without formal rank on the staffs of Brig. Gen. John S. Williams and others in western Virginia.

Together with the fighting at Middle Creek on January 10, this engagement shattered the Confederate defensive line that had been holding eastern Kentucky. It would be summer before Confederate hopes in the state revived, when Bragg and Maj. Gen. Kirby Smith mounted their campaign into Kentucky, an effort that ended at Perryville and forced Bragg to withdraw. Of the two Union triumphs won in Kentucky that January, Mill Springs stood as the larger. Building on these successes, U.S. forces pushed the war forward into Middle Tennessee by February.