The Confederate high command did not function much better. Until nightfall, Bragg remained completely ignorant that he faced an entire Union army. His tactics also were abysmal. Having earlier avoided fighting because he did not want to risk losing his army, he had then taken his precious troops and hurled them over rivers and up ridgelines in futile bayonet charges. The Union line had been driven back, but not broken.

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As night settled in, a full moon illuminated the battlefield. Buell’s officers now urged him to renew the attack and hammer Bragg while he had the chance. Had Buell followed their advice, he might have come close to destroying Bragg’s entire army, Smith’s men included. Instead, he demurred and decided to wait until morning, when it was too late. By that time, Bragg had finally come to his senses. He realized that only the greatest of luck had saved him from crushing defeat. In the morning, the Confederates were gone. The chance to bring Kentucky into the sway of the Confederacy was irretrievably lost, but at least Bragg had retired his army.

Bragg left 3,396 dead and wounded on the field, to the Union’s loss of 4,211. Considering that his troops had been on the offensive, that was a pretty good differential. The result was still a defeat for the Confederates, since they were forced to withdraw first from Perryville and then from Kentucky altogether. Bragg briefly considered making a stand at Harrodsburg, but as the Union forces approached, he rethought his notion and left, beginning a long retreat into Tennessee.

Buell, for his part, carried out a very halfhearted pursuit. On October 16, he informed Washington that it was impossible to catch the Rebels because the roads were too rough and the country too barren. A stinging rebuke came back from Halleck urging him on. Buell still went too slowly to please Lincoln, and on October 23 he was relieved of his command in favor of William Rosecrans.

On the same day, Bragg reached Knoxville, Tenn. His soldiers were in terrible condition–no shoes, no food, their clothing in tatters, and over 15,000 of them suffering from dysentery, typhoid, scurvy and pneumonia. Bitter criticism of Bragg’s conduct of the campaign was soon making the rounds of the officers’ tents. Awaiting him in Knoxville was a telegram from President Jefferson Davis summoning him to Richmond. Somehow, he managed to explain the affair to Davis’ satisfaction, but never again would his supremely gallant but poorly led troops follow him confidently into battle. ‘Hooray for Bragg, he’s hell on retreats!’ they would shout bitterly when he passed.

As for Buell, he turned over command to Rosecrans without much regret. Although he had blunted the boldest Confederate offensive of the war in the western theater of action, he had suffered the same fate as fellow Democrat General George McClellan, who had also been sacked after stopping Robert E. Lee at Antietam a few weeks earlier. No longer was it enough for Northern generals to win battles–now they had to be politically correct, as well. As in all civil wars, political considerations–not just results on the battlefield–would increasingly come to play a part in the deadly serious game of musical chairs between Abraham Lincoln and his disappointed, disappointing generals.

This article was written by James W. Flanagan and originally appeared in the March 1997 issue of America’s Civil War. For more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of America’s Civil War.

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