Perryville

On October 8, 1862, Confederate and Union forces clashed among the Chaplin Hills just west of Perryville, Kentucky, in an engagement also remembered as the Battle of Chaplin Hills. This clash marked the climax of the Confederate Heartland Offensive, often called the Kentucky Campaign, during the American Civil War. In the fighting itself, Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Mississippi managed to gain a tactical edge, striking mainly at one corps within Don Carlos Buell's Union Army of the Ohio. Yet in the larger picture, historians regard the outcome as a strategic win for the Union, and the clash is sometimes labeled the Battle for Kentucky, given that Bragg pulled his forces back into Tennessee not long afterward. Kentucky, a border state whose loyalty mattered greatly to both sides, remained under Union control through the rest of the conflict.

The prior day, October 7, Buell's army closed in on Perryville from three directions as it chased after Bragg's men toward this modest crossroads town. Early clashes broke out between Union troops and Confederate cavalry along the Springfield Pike, and the combat widened once Confederate infantry reached Peters Hill. Both armies, meanwhile, were driven by an urgent need to secure drinking water.

When dawn broke the next morning, combat flared anew near Peters Hill as a Union division pushed forward along the pike, stopping just short of the Confederate position. Past midday, a Confederate division slammed into the Union left, where Alexander M. McCook commanded the I Corps, and drove those troops backward. As additional Confederate divisions entered the battle, Union soldiers held firm for a time, launched a counterattack, but eventually gave ground, with some units breaking into retreat.

Buell himself, positioned several miles to the rear, remained unaware that a full-scale battle had erupted and failed to dispatch reinforcements until the late afternoon hours. Once two fresh brigades arrived to bolster the Union left, that line steadied, and the Confederate assault lost its momentum. Afterward, three Confederate regiments moved against the Union division stationed along the Springfield Pike, only to be beaten back into Perryville itself. Union forces chased them

Background

Kentucky occupied a pivotal position along the border, wedged between the Confederate states of Tennessee and Virginia and the free states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Both sides prized the state for its geography and its command of vital waterways, especially the Ohio River. Abraham Lincoln, himself a native of Kentucky, captured this anxiety in a private letter from September 1861, writing that losing Kentucky would come close to losing the entire war.

Early in the conflict, rival political factions inside Kentucky struggled for dominance, and lawmakers attempted to sidestep the war entirely by declaring the state neutral, hoping to bar entry to both armies. That neutrality collapsed on September 3, 1861, when Confederate Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk marched into Columbus, a town deemed essential for command of the lower Mississippi. Two days afterward, Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took Paducah, and from that point the notion of neutrality carried no real weight. Kentucky formally stayed within the Union, yet legislators loyal to the Confederacy established a rival capital at Bowling Green in November 1861, though it never held real authority within the state. Richmond nonetheless recognized Kentucky as one of its own, adding a star to the Confederate flag in its honor.

Following the bloody clash at Shiloh on April 6 and 7, the defeated Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard fell back to Corinth. Union troops under Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, comprising the armies of Grant, Buell, and John Pope, trailed them at a crawling pace. Despite commanding roughly 100,000 men against Beauregard's force of half that size or fewer, Halleck needed 51 days to cover the twenty miles separating Pittsburg Landing from Corinth, which the Confederates finally gave up on May 29. Jefferson Davis, displeased with Beauregard's withdrawal, stripped him of command and handed the army to Braxton Bragg, who rechristened it the Army of Tennessee. Bragg used much of June to drill and rebuild his forces at Tupelo, Mississippi, while Union forces made no move against him, letting the fighting in Tennessee stall out for the summer. Grant's Army of the Tennessee lay dispersed across the western part of the state and into northern Mississippi, and Buell's Army of the Ohio crept toward Chattanooga at a glacial rate, devoting much of its energy to repairing rail lines. Halleck, who had directed the entire western effort since spring, was called to Washington in July to serve as general-in-chief, leaving Grant and Buell each running independent commands. Pope, too, departed for the east to lead Union operations in Virginia, his old army folded into Grant's and placed under William Rosecrans.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, in charge of the Department of East Tennessee, was the chief advocate for pushing into Kentucky. He argued that such a campaign would secure supplies, draw fresh recruits, pull Union forces away from Tennessee, and win the state for the Confederacy. In July 1862, Col. John Hunt Morgan led a cavalry raid deep into territory behind Buell's lines, rattling both Buell's command and officials in Washington. Local residents greeted Morgan's men warmly during the raid, and his ranks swelled by 300 Kentucky volunteers, bringing his total to 900 men. He wrote confidently to Kirby Smith that the entire region could be won over, predicting that 25,000 to 30,000 men would rally to the cause immediately.

Bragg weighed several courses of action, among them retaking Corinth or striking at Buell's army through Middle Tennessee. In the end he answered Kirby Smith's appeals for reinforcement, choosing to bring his Army of Mississippi northward to unite with him. He shuttled 30,000 infantrymen on a roundabout rail route from Tupelo through Mobile and Montgomery before reaching Chattanooga, while his wagons, cavalry, and guns

Battle

The battle opened with sporadic gunfire early on October 8, when Indiana soldiers from the 10th regiment pushed forward to reach algae-covered pools sitting in the dry channel of Doctor's Creek, running into pickets from the 7th Arkansas and trading shots with them. Around 2 a.m., Buell and III Corps commander Gilbert directed the recently elevated Brig. Gen. Phil Sheridan to take Peters Hill, and Sheridan set out with Col. Daniel McCook's brigade, McCook being the younger sibling of the I Corps commander. Sheridan captured the hill and pushed the Arkansas troops back toward their brigade's main line, then kept advancing across the creek. Liddell's brigade proved unable to halt the thirsty Union men, and Buckner, who commanded Liddell's division, received instructions from Polk to withdraw rather than send support, since Polk worried about triggering a full engagement west of the Chaplin River while believing his forces were outnumbered. On the opposing side, an anxious Gilbert instructed Sheridan to pull back to Peters Hill.

In the days before this, Braxton Bragg had been misled by the feint Sills directed toward Frankfort, believing it represented Buell's main effort. His plan called for Polk to crush what he judged a small force at Perryville and then rejoin the rest of the army with Kirby Smith's command. Early that morning Polk informed Bragg by message that he planned an aggressive assault, but he soon reversed course and adopted a defensive stance instead. Frustrated at hearing no combat, Bragg rode from Harrodsburg to Perryville, reaching the town around 10 a.m. and setting up his command post at the Crawford house along the Harrodsburg Pike.

What Bragg found troubled him: Polk's line was full of gaps and lacked solid anchoring on either end. Riding in, he spotted some of McCook's I Corps troops to the north of town, yet he still believed the main danger lay along the Springfield Pike, where fighting involving the III Corps had already occurred that morning. He remained unaware that Crittenden's II Corps was approaching via the Lebanon Pike. Bragg ordered his army realigned along a north-south axis in preparation for a staggered, echeloned assault. Cheatham's division marched north out of town to open the offensive against what Bragg took to be the Union left near the Mackville Road, launching a sweeping left-wheel maneuver. Two brigades under Patton Anderson would then hit the Union center, with Buckner's division following on the left, while another of Anderson's brigades, led by Col. Samuel Powel, would strike further south along the Springfield Pike. The dust kicked up by Cheatham's men rushing north led some of McCook's soldiers to mistakenly think the Confederates were retreating, which only heightened the shock when the attack actually came.

By the afternoon, the bulk of Buell's forces had reached the field: McCook's I Corps held the left, stretching from the Benton Road to the Mackville Road; Gilbert's III Corps occupied the center along the Springfield Pike; and Crittenden's II Corps anchored the right along the Lebanon Pike. Nearly all the fighting that followed would fall upon McCook's corps. A strange acoustic phenomenon kept most sounds of combat from reaching Buell's headquarters, located just two miles away, and as a result he failed to manage the battle actively, holding back his reserves until very late in the day.

Cheatham opened with an artillery barrage at 12:30 p.m. but delayed sending his infantry forward. Union troops kept extending their line northward, moving past where the Confederates expected to strike. In response, Bragg shifted Cheatham's division into Walker's Bend, thinking this exposed flank was now the target. Unfortunately for the Confederates, their cavalry scouts had already withdrawn before McCook positioned Lt. Charles Parsons' battery and Brig. Gen. William R. Terrill's brigade atop the Open Knob, a key elevation at the battlefield's northern edge.

Brig. Gen. Daniel S. Donelson's brigade was first across the Chaplin River, scaling the western bluffs and launching an assault near 2 p.m., though two of its regiments had been pulled away, leaving only three to carry out the attack. Cheatham reportedly bellowed encouragement to his men, and according to enduring legend, Polk, who besides being a general was also an Episcopal bishop, echo

Aftermath

Braxton Bragg could claim something of a tactical win, since his aggressive fighting had driven the opposing force back more than a mile. Yet the fragility of his position soon became apparent once word reached him of the III Corps moving up the Springfield Pike, followed later that day by news that the II Corps had appeared on the Lebanon Pike. Gathering his subordinates at the Crawford House at nine that evening, he issued orders for the army to pull back after midnight, keeping a line of pickets in place as his forces moved to link up with Kirby Smith's command. During the march toward Harrodsburg, 900 wounded soldiers had to be abandoned.

At Harrodsburg, Bragg's troops combined with Smith's, and for roughly a week afterward the two armies, now roughly matched in numbers, traded skirmishes without either side committing to a full attack. Bragg came to realize that the fresh Kentucky infantry recruits he had hoped for would not materialize, though a fair number of Kentuckians did join Confederate cavalry units. He also decided that his army could not remain in the state without adequate supply lines, so he moved southeast toward Knoxville, Tennessee, passing through the Cumberland Gap. Soon afterward he was summoned to Richmond, Virginia, where he had to answer to Jefferson Davis regarding accusations from his own officers, who wanted him removed from command over how the campaign had gone. Davis chose to keep Bragg in charge, but the episode left lasting damage to his standing with the men under him. Once back with the army, Bragg directed it to move toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Buell's pursuit of Bragg was lackluster at best, and rather