Both Bragg and Smith were marching forward on Kentucky soil in August before Buell had any idea where they were. Nobody in Washington knew either. Alarmed, Lincoln telegraphed Buell: ‘What degree of certainty have you that Bragg with his command is not now in the Valley of the Shenandoah in Virginia?’ If so, the president reasoned, he could be adding to the menace of the Rebels under General Robert E. Lee, who had stalled Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s drive on Richmond and now were threatening Washington. Finally realizing that Bragg was in Kentucky, Buell went after him in hot pursuit, leaving a small force to protect Nashville.

On August 30, the same day the authorities in Washington were thrown into panic by Maj. Gen. John Pope’s defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, Smith’s troops captured Richmond, Ky. They defeated a Federal force of about 7,000 mostly green recruits from Ohio and Indiana, hurried forward by their governors in response to pleas from Washington for somebody to defend Kentucky while the nation’s capital looked to its own defense.

Smith, in his triumphant report to the War Department declared: ‘The enemy were utterly routed and retreated in terrible confusion….The remnant of the Federal force in Kentucky is making its way, utterly demoralized and scattered, to the Ohio River….The country is rising in arms. If I am supported and can be supplied with arms, 25,000 Kentucky troops in a few days would be added to my command.’

Smith’s barefoot and hungry soldiers moved through Lexington and then arrived at Frankfort, the state capital, to find that the pro-Union governor and Legislature had fled to Louisville. Welcoming crowds convinced Smith that ‘the heart of the people of Kentucky is with the South in this struggle. They are rallying to our flag….I am pushing some forces in the direction of Cincinnati.’

Bragg’s soldiers marched into Glasgow, Ky., on September 14, outpacing Buell’s pursuing bluecoats, and he informed the War Department: ‘The troops are in good tone and condition, somewhat footsore and tired, but cheerful….With arms, we can not only clear Tennessee and Kentucky but, I confidently trust, hold them both.’

‘My army is in high spirits and ready to go anywhere the old general says,’ Bragg wrote to his wife. ‘With but one suit of clothes, no tents, nothing to eat but meat and bread and, when we can’t get that, roasting ears from the cornfields along the road, we have the most extraordinary campaign in military history.’

Bragg scored an easy victory over green Indiana volunteers on September 17 when his troops surrounded the Federal fort at Munfordville and achieved its unconditional surrender without firing a shot. He counted more than 4,000 prisoners, 5,000 rifles, a large quantity of ammunition and many horses and mules.

The prickly Old Porcupine had good reason to smile for a change. Astride the Green River halfway across Kentucky, he could imagine that his dream might really come true. From Munfordville, he issued an order thanking his men for ‘the crowning success of their extraordinary campaign,’ and he reported to Richmond, ‘My admiration of and love for my army cannot be expressed.’

General Buell later said the Confederates now had ‘virtual possession of the whole of Kentucky east of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, except within the limits of Covington and Louisville.’ Covington was an Ohio River suburb of Cincinnati, and Buell recorded that the Rebels had thrown their pickets ‘almost to the gates of Cincinnati and Louisville.’

‘If Louisville is taken, the state is gone,’ Governor James F. Robinson lamented, after fleeing there from Frankfort. The Rebels’ approach set off a panic. Frightened citizens fled across the river to Indiana loaded down with valuable possessions. Major General William Nelson, a profane 300-pound former Navy man, rallied his motley crew of greenhorns and convalescents to defend the city and ‘to give a bloody welcome to the rebel horde.’ One newspaper writer complained: ‘When the capture and the sacking of Louisville and conscription into the rebel army stares us in the face, we hang back from volunteering….We are willing to sacrifice our city and ourselves for the cause of the Union, but not to the military imbecility, ignorance and cowardice of many of the officers and men whom it is the misfortune of General Nelson to command. But all will be well pending the arrival of Gen. Buell, that notorious military sluggard.’

The’sluggard’ was racing after Bragg, avoiding a battle, marching his weary men at a quick-step pace and trying to reach Louisville first. As usual, the Union brass complained that he was too slow. Halleck telegraphed him on September 20: ‘After Bragg had turned your left, your movement into Kentucky was probably the best thing you could do; but I fear that here, as elsewhere, you move too slowly and will permit the junction of Bragg and Smith before you open your line to Louisville.’

Actually, Bragg did not have enough troops to attack Buell’s much larger army unless Smith’s Confederates could join him — and they were far away at Lexington. Smith warned Bragg that Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was sending veteran soldiers up the river to join Buell while another army of Northern volunteers was forming to protect Cincinnati.

Imploring Bragg to attack Buell, Smith declared, ‘I regard the defeat of Buell before he effects a junction with the force at Louisville as a military necessity, for Buell’s army has always been the great bugbear to these people.’ Unless Buell could be beaten, he added, ‘we cannot hope for much addition to our ranks from Kentucky.’

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