Impatient at the latest turns of events, Bragg decided to ride back and take personal command–a remarkable decision when one remembers that he thought the main Federal army was somewhere else. Bragg arrived at Perryville at 10 a.m. on October 8 and immediately began making preparations to attack. At the time, he was aware only of McCook’s and portions of Gilbert’s corps on the battlefield.

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Bragg’s plan was simple. He gave Polk the left wing and Hardee the right. After a brief cannonade, Polk was to attack the Union left flank. Once this assault was under way, Hardee was to join in. Joe Wheeler’s exhausted cavalry was sent down the Lebanon Pike to scout that area. Bragg thus remained unaware that an entire Union corps was on the road and capable of driving into Perryville itself, thus bringing destruction down on the smaller Rebel army.

Polk and Hardee had been correct in their assumption that Buell was preparing to attack. Fortunately for the Confederates, things did not go as the lame Union commander planned. Buell’s headquarters had sent out instructions to both McCook and Crittenden to be out of bivouac by 3 a.m. and in position to launch an attack by 10 a.m. The messages were unaccountably delayed, and neither general was ready at the proper time. When, at midmorning, Buell heard no sounds of engagement, he simply assumed that the Rebels had slipped away and that he would have to wait another day for his battle.

Then, promptly at noon, Confederate batteries opened on the Union positions. For an hour and a half, the Rebel guns played along Union lines. There was a tremendous amount of noise and great clouds of dust from the dry fields, but the shelling did not do much to disrupt the Union troops. A reporter from the Cincinnati Gazette noted: ‘Their missiles struck everywhere except where they intended them to strike, and it actually seemed that the safest points which could be selected for a circuit of two or three miles were in the very midst of their batteries.’

The shelling lasted longer than planned because Polk had delayed the attack. Seeing a column of Union soldiers moving down the Mackville Pike, Polk feared his attack would be taken in flank. Therefore, he waited until these troops had arrived at their destination. Then, after they were positioned but before they could settle in , he hurled Cheatham’s men forward. Cheatham went in with his men, screaming, ‘Give ‘em hell, boys!’ Polk, always mindful of his double identity as Episcopal bishop and Southern general, seconded this. ‘Give it to ‘em boys,’ he said. ‘Give ‘em what General Cheatham says!’

The first waves of Tennessee veterans swung forward, hurtling over the Chaplin River. But before their attack could fully develop they came under murderous fire from several Union batteries. The attack was blunted and driven to ground in a small clump of woods. More troops were pushed into the attack but they, too, wound up taking cover. Those were troops from Brig. Gen. George Maney’s brigade. The general himself now dashed into the bullet-flecked trees. Maney beat his men back into a battle line, and for a third time they went forward. This time, the Confederate lunge went over the Union batteries and up the slope into the main Union line.

There, at the top of the rise, the green brigades of Brig. Gens. James Jackson and William Terrill waited. Forward came the gray lines, sheets of flame erupting here and there as units paused to fire. Swords flashed down and hundreds of Northern muskets replied in kind. When the Rebels came forward again, they left their dead to mark their resting spot. Then the fearsome Rebel yell split the air and the fortitude of the Yankee defenders waned.

In an instant, the lines were an intermingled mass of struggling men. The blue lines wavered, then broke. Jackson and Terrill struggled frantically to hold the line, but there was no way for green troops to stop the fury of the charge. Jackson gave his life trying.

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