From Bardstown, Bragg issued an extraordinary proclamation to the people of the Northwest. He called upon the individual states to make a separate peace with the Confederacy and thus end ‘this useless and cruel effusion of blood.’ This was not a personal plea but, as the New York Herald noted, Bragg ‘was dispatched by Jefferson Davis’ to make this direct appeal at the head of his army as a political power move, to split the West from the East.

It was not a mere coincidence that the manifesto came out on September 26, only a few days after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had aroused a storm of criticism among the Democrats of the Northwest who said they had supported the war for the Union but opposed a war to abolish slavery.

Noting that many in the Northwest said they were fighting to keep the Mississippi River open to their trade, Bragg said the ‘great artery is yours and always has been without striking a blow.’ The Mississippi’should never have been disturbed by the antagonisms, the cupidity and the bigotry of New England and the East,’ he said. ‘You are being used by them to fight the battle of emancipation….You are blindly following abolitionism…while they are nicely calculating the gain of obtaining your trade on terms that would impoverish your country.’

With a little verbal saber rattling, the general declared: ‘So far, it is only our fields that have been laid waste, our people killed, our homes made desolate, and our frontiers ravaged by rapine and murder, but if the war must go on, the future scenes of desolation must be in the North. With the people of the Northwest rests the power to put an end to the invasion of their homes….Their own state governments…can secure immunity from the desolating effects of warfare on their own soil by a separate treaty of peace. When the passions of this unnatural war shall have subsided and peace resumes her sway, a community of interests will force commercial and social coalition between the great grain and stock growing states of the Northwest and the cotton, tobacco and sugar regions of the South.’

Next Bragg made a move that General Buell later called ‘part of a formidable political and strategical scheme aimed at the conquest and absorption of Kentucky.’ Bragg determined to install a pro-Confederate provisional governor. Since Unionist Governor James Robinson had lately skedaddled with the Legislature to Louisville to escape the Rebels’ advance, the Confederates had a tight grip on the state capital, and the way was clear to bring Kentucky officially into the Confederacy. Leaving Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk in command of the troops near Bardstown, Bragg went to Frankfort to lend his presence to the inauguration of Provisional Governor Richard Hawes. Smith’s troops, who were concentrated there, provided the colorful escort on the day of jubilee, October 4.

Meanwhile Buell began reorganizing his army, mixing the green troops of Nelson’s command with the veterans of his long march and building up the total to nearly 80,000, nearly twice as many as the armies of Bragg and Smith combined. However, on September 29, Buell suffered a blow when Nelson was killed by an Indiana brigadier, curiously named Jefferson C. Davis, after an argument.

Buell also had plenty of trouble with discord among the officers of his own command. All along their retreat through Tennessee and Kentucky, various subordinates had expressed mounting distrust of him. ‘I heard a great deal of murmuring that General Buell did not want to fight General Bragg,’ Brig. Gen. J. B. Steedman testified later at an Army inquiry. ‘Some ascribed it to timidity, some to prudence, some went so far as to impugn the loyalty of General Buell.’

‘Don Carlos won’t do,’ said Maj. Gen. Alexander McCook. ‘George Thomas is the man. We must have him.’ About 20 officers met secretly at a house in Kentucky and sent a petition to Lincoln demanding that Buell be dismissed. They received a quick reply. A telegram from Washington came on September 29, ordering that the commanding general be replaced with ‘Pap’ Thomas. But Thomas declined, arguing that Buell already had his plans to move against the Confederates in place and it would be wrong to sack him now. So Buell kept the command — but with a sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

At long last Buell moved out of Louisville on October 1 with his roughly 80,000 troops in three corps spread out on separate roads. He was under orders from Washington to find the Rebels and smash them. As Buell himself recalled, his men were ‘threatening the whole of the Confederates’ front, which extended over 60 miles.’

Buell sent a couple of divisions in a feint toward Frankfort, where Bragg, with Smith’s troops, was adding a sense of military presence to the inauguration of the new provisional governor. Hawes’ day of glory soon faded, however, when a messenger brought the news that some of the Yankees were on their way to the capital, so the festivities had to be cut short. Bragg, Hawes and others had their dinner in the hotel kitchen and left just in time to escape the Union forces, the Chicago Tribune claimed.

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