Confederate Heartland Offensive

• Major General E. Kirby SmithChattanooga, Richmond
• General Braxton BraggMunfordville, Perryville
• Brigadier General Nathan Bedford ForrestMurfreesboro
• Brigadier General James R. ChalmersMunfordville

• Brigadier General James NegleyChattanooga
• Brigadier General Thomas T. CrittendenMurfreesboro
• Major General William NelsonRichmond
• Colonel Cyrus L. DunhamMunfordville
• Colonel John T. WilderMunfordville
• Major General Don Carlos BuellPerryville

From August 14 to October 10, 1862, Confederate forces launched a campaign through Tennessee and Kentucky that came to be called the Kentucky Campaign, or alternatively the Confederate Heartland Offensive. Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith led the effort, aiming to maneuver around Major General Don Carlos Buell's Union forces and pull Kentucky, then neutral, into the Confederacy. Despite achieving a tactical victory at Perryville along with other gains, the Confederates ultimately withdrew. Kentucky remained largely in Union hands for the remainder of the conflict.

Background

By the middle of 1862, Union armies operating in the western theater had already made substantial headway, pushing Confederate forces out of Kentucky and much of Tennessee. Victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson had given the U.S. Navy free passage along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Confederate troops had also abandoned the vital rail junction at Corinth, leaving nearly all of West Tennessee under federal authority. Meanwhile, Admiral David Farragut had seized New Orleans, then the largest city in the Confederacy.

With these losses mounting, Vicksburg, Mississippi, emerged as a critical objective for Union planners, since Confederate holdings in the west had been reduced to little more than a single rail line running eastward out of that city. Defending this remaining Mississippi River stronghold thus became an urgent priority for the Confederacy. In response, General Braxton Bragg sought to draw Union attention away from both Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Tennessee, the latter under threat from a sizable force commanded by Don Carlos Buell. His plan was to strike north into Kentucky, one of the border states in the Upper South.

Kentucky held economic and symbolic importance far beyond its size. Its western counties grew cotton, while central and western plantations, worked by enslaved labor, produced tobacco much as in Virginia and North Carolina. The state also supplied most of the hemp used for cotton rope and served as a major hub of the slave trade, particularly through Louisville.

As a border state, Kentucky embodied the divided loyalties often described as brother against brother. Delegates and sympathizers from sixty eight counties had already broken away to join the Confederacy, and for a time these secessionists held sway over more than half the state, though their authority collapsed after early 1862. At the war's outset Kentucky had proclaimed neutrality, but when Confederate General Leonidas Polk moved to occupy Columbus in 1861, the state legislature asked the Union Army for help, overriding the governor's objections. From that point onward, federal control over Kentucky steadily grew, even though the state still carried a star on the Confederate flag and held seats in the Confederate Congress.

Kentucky's ties to the war ran deep on both sides. John C. Breckinridge, among other Confederate leaders, hailed from the state, and Abraham Lincoln himself had been born there before moving to Illinois at age seven. Most of the relatives of Mary Todd Lincoln from the Lexington area sided with the Confederacy, and roughly 35,000 Kentuckians ultimately fought for that cause. Union enlistment from the state was far greater, with about 125,000 men serving in federal ranks. Kentucky sent nearly sixty infantry regiments to the Union army compared with only nine to the Confederacy, though its contribution of cavalry units to the southern side was considerably larger.