General Bragg’s Impossible Dream: Take Kentucky

 | Civil War Times  | one comment  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

On October 8, portions of the two rival armies blundered into each other west of the town of Perryville, where both sides were desperately trying to find water in streams that had been reduced by the summer-long drought to a brackish trickle. Taking personal command, Bragg led about 16,000 of his soldiers in an attack on approximately 25,000 Federals, mostly green recruits on the Union left under the command of McCook. Buell reported that ‘McCook fought bravely but was steadily driven back for a mile until the enemy’s pursuing line came within the infilading fire of Gen. Phil Sheridan’s artillery, which was delivered with great effect.’

An eyewitness provided this report of the attack on the Yankee division headed by a former Kentucky congressman, James S. Jackson: ‘The Rebels stealthily advanced, then suddenly deploying on the left, they occupied the whole space in front of Jackson’s division and rushed out with demoniac yells.’ With their spine-chilling Rebel yells and murderous volleys of musket fire, the battle-hardened Southerners broke the Union line and the green volunteers panicked and ran. Jackson and two brigadiers were killed.

Sheridan’s guns came to the rescue like ‘a volcano belching fire and smoke and flinging deadly projectiles into the damaged and staggering traitors,’ a newsman reported. He claimed that the’shattered masses of the enemy gave way and were pursued beyond Perryville,’ but the Rebels held the field when the savage battle ended at sundown.

Lieutenant General Joseph Wheeler of the Confederate cavalry insisted the fight was a Southern victory. He wrote, ‘We had engaged three corps of the Federal army; one of these, McCook’s, to use Buell’s language, was very much crippled,’ and one division ‘almost entirely disappeared.’ More than 3,000 men on each side had fallen.

After nightfall, a full moon cast its silvery beams upon the field of carnage, making the night seem almost as light as day. Some of Buell’s officers urged him to stage a night attack. He decided instead to start the assault at dawn. But by morning the Confederates were all gone. They were plodding back down the long, rough road to east Tennessee, and Buell made only a half-hearted attempt to stop them. General Wheeler’s cavalrymen fought off a series of raids on the lengthy cavalcade of artillery, horse-drawn wagons loaded with food and supplies collected from the bountiful Bluegrass country.

The decision to retreat mystified Buell, who had expected another day of fighting, and his men claimed to be eager for the kill. It enraged Smith, and tempted him to think that Bragg had lost his nerve — or even worse, his mind.

Bragg’s behavior did indicate symptoms of a man suffering from a volatile temperament that could be described by modern psychiatrists as manic-depressive. At the outset of his drive into Kentucky, he was optimistic and confident. Now he seemed to be sunk in deep pit of gloom, giving up and going home.

The Old Porcupine had believed that Price and Van Dorn could overcome Federal resistance and sweep through Tennessee to join him on the Ohio. But early October brought the disheartening news that their armies had been beaten in the battles of Iuka and Corinth, so Bragg had no choice but to leave Kentucky with his immense load of booty, reducing his vast enterprise into little more than a raid.

Bragg had not lost his mind. He had coldly realized that, although a portion of his troops had defeated a portion of the Yankee army at Perryville, the odds were heavily against defeating Buell’s entire army in an all-out battle the next day. Outnumbered by at least 2-to-1, handicapped by many sick and wounded men and having no way of replenishing their ammunition, the Rebels would be risking too much in such a conflict. The Chicago Tribune painted a realistic picture of the Confederate troops in Kentucky in early October: ‘The majority are under age and but few of them have shoes. They are miserably clothed, dirty and half starved.’

Even so, wrote a shrewd observer in the Cincinnati Commercial, Bragg’s expedition had achieved one purpose: ‘It was intended by Jeff Davis as a demonstration to keep the men of the West from being employed beyond the Alleghenies to aid McClellan, while the best of the Southern troops invaded Maryland and flanked Washington.’ Thousands of Union troops at Louisville, Cincinnati, Cumberland Gap and elsewhere ‘have been held at bay by no more than 40,000 rebels scattered throughout Kentucky.’

Wheeler maintained that the Kentucky campaign had achieved ‘great results’ despite the complaints by critics who charged that it should have done much more. ‘We recovered Cumberland Gap and redeemed Middle Tennessee and North Alabama,’ he wrote. ‘Two months of marches and battles by the armies of Bragg and Kirby-Smith had cost the Federals a loss in killed, wounded and prisoners of 26,530,’ Wheeler asserted. ‘We had captured 35 cannons, 16,000 stand of arms, millions of rounds of ammunition, 1,700 mules, 300 wagons loaded with military stores, and 2,000 horses.’

Rebel war clerk J.B. Jones recorded that Bragg’succeeded in getting away with the largest amount of provisions, clothing, etc., ever obtained by an army, including 8,000 beef cattle, 50,000 barrels of pork, and a million yards of Kentucky cloth.’ All of these were indeed sorely needed to help the Southern people survive the coming winter. But they provided small solace for the keen disappointment of those who had hailed their army’s early successes in Kentucky and confidently believed that it would capture Louisville and Cincinnati.

The Confederate civilians believed that Bragg and Smith had many more troops than they really did — there were no more than 40,000 in all fit for combat. That belief gave rise to the most unrealistic hopes for victory. ‘They were sorely disappointed,’ Wheeler wrote, ‘when they heard of Gen. Bragg’s withdrawal through Cumberland Gap and could not be convinced of the necessity of such a movement immediately following the battle of Perryville, which they regarded as a decisive victory. The censure which fell upon Bragg was therefore severe and almost universal.’ The Richmond Whig ridiculed Bragg’s whole campaign as a miserable ‘fizzle.’

Stung by the fusillade of criticism, Bragg blamed the Kentuckians for failing to make good on their promises to build up his army with thousands of recruits eager to fight. ‘Why should we be expected to conquer the whole Northwest with 35,000 men?’ Bragg demanded, pouring out his bitter frustration in a letter to his wife. ‘Our only hope was in Kentucky. We were assured she would be with us to a man, yet in seven weeks occupation, with twenty thousand guns and ammunition burdening our train, we only succeeded in getting about two thousand men to join us and at least half of them have now deserted.’

Bragg denounced the Kentucky ‘cowards who skulked about in the dark to say to us, ‘We are with you, only whip these fellows out of our country and let us see you can protect us, and we will join you.” In the general’s view, the timid Kentuckians had the situation backwards: They were supposed to rise first and fight, not wait for the Confederates to free them.

It is one of the ironies of warfare that both the Union and Confederate commanders suffered severe criticism and many assaults on their characters for failing to achieve a great triumph in Kentucky. Buell received no thanks for his role in thwarting the Confederates’ audacious enterprise. The official Army inquiry, in which a commission questioned many of his senior officers about their complaints, ruled that Buell had failed to keep Bragg from entering Kentucky in the first place and had failed to pursue and destroy his army on its way back to Tennessee.

Buell returned to Nashville instead of moving into east Tennessee to relieve the Union-loving people there — a project dear to Lincoln’s heart. Indiana’s Governor Oliver Morton and Tennessee’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, pursued Buell relentlessly until he was sacked on October 24 and replaced by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans. Buell never commanded troops again. He resigned his commission as a Regular Army colonel in July 1864.

Nonetheless, Kentucky remained in Union hands and was not seriously threatened for the remainder of the war. The dream of Bragg and so many other Southerners of moving their northern border to the Ohio and attacking the Northwest, or compelling its citizens to make peace, ultimately faded into the background as little more than another what-might-have-been for the Confederacy.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts