On the other end of the front, Bragg had intended that Maj. Gen. Sterling Price advance into western Tennessee as Buell evacuated his positions. Fellow Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn had been tasked with keeping the other Union forces in the area, under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, off Price’s back. Grant had other ideas, however. Taking advantage of the disunity rampant among Confederate commanders, he managed to insert his force between the two Rebel armies. On September 19, Grant hit Price at Iuka, Miss. Grant had planned to execute a turning movement around Price, but the flanking force under Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans did not arrive in time.

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The Southerners managed to hold open their line of retreat with repeated attacks. The Rebels lost 1,500 men to half that for Grant, but were able to extricate and unite their forces. Grant had failed to eliminate Price, but he had caught the Rebel’s attention. For the time being, Nashville was safe; no reinforcements were going to Bragg.

With an attack on Nashville neutralized for the moment, Bragg had some hard choices to make. One course of action was to attack the Union Army at Bowling Green. Bragg, however, decided that this would not be feasible, despite the fact that he had captured some important Federal mail that indicated Buell’s army was ‘greatly demoralized, disheartened and deceived; utterly in the dark as to our movements.’

Instead, Bragg became preoccupied with the lack of supplies his men were able to forage in that part of Kentucky. There had been a horrible drought, and foodstuffs were hard to find. Bragg decided to bring his army north to Bardstown. Such a move would hopefully allow him more supplies, give him the chance to unite with Smith’s forces, and leave him the option of hitting either Louisville or Buell’s hard-pressed army.

On September 22, the city of Louisville heard about the imminent approach of Bragg’s soldiers and went into a panic. Major General William ‘Bull’ Nelson, who had lost at Richmond three weeks before, was in command of the city and issued orders that all women and children were to leave at once. He quickly followed this with an announcement that the Jeffersonville Ferry, the only way of getting to Indiana, was to be reserved for military purposes. Within an hour, he had a first-class panic on his hands. The streets were filled with terror-stricken civilians.

The citizens of Louisville need not have worried. Already, Bragg had decided that the city was too tough a nut to crack with Buell’s army still loose. The lack of supplies was still proving an acute problem. As Bragg later noted: ‘We were therefore compelled to give up the object (Louisville) and seek for subsistence.’ Subsistence meant moving east toward a rendezvous with Smith in the bluegrass.

With Bragg moving east, Buell reoccupied Munfordville and drove his men hard for the Ohio. At noon on September 25, the day Nelson had predicted the Rebels would arrive, the head of Buell’s column came into view. The rest of the army was strung out for more than 10 miles along the road. Still, experienced observers noted with alarm the poor condition of the troops.

Buell’s occupation of Louisville doomed any chance Bragg might have had of seizing the Ohio River cities, but even so, Buell and his men were given little time to rest. As far as the administration in Washington was concerned, Buell had done no more than allow large portions of Tennessee and Kentucky to fall back under Rebel control. So angry was Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, Abraham Lincoln’s chief military adviser, that he transmitted a message summarily relieving Buell of command and ordering him to hand over the Army of the Ohio to Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas.

Although Halleck quickly relented and tried to stop the message, it was too late. The only thing that saved Buell was the modesty and loyalty of Thomas. He at once informed Buell that he had no intention of taking over command and would wire his decision to Washington at once. Lincoln accepted Thomas’ flimsy excuses for the time being, but the return message was crystal clear. The tenure of Buell’s command would continue only so long as he was marching against, and attacking, the Rebels. Should he not be able to follow through aggressively, someone else would get the job.

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