Civil War - The Battle of Perryville

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History of the
Battle of Perryville

In the summer of 1862, Confederate generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith devised plans to invade Kentucky. In an attempt to procure supplies, enlist recruits, and to pull Union troops away from the vital railhead of Chattanooga, Tennessee, these Southern commanders instigated a two-pronged advance into the Commonwealth.

Kirby Smith left Knoxville on August 14 and entered the state. Two weeks later, Braxton Bragg’s Confederates followed. By mid-September, Smith’s soldiers had whipped a Federal force at Richmond and Bragg’s troops had captured a Union garrison at Munfordville. The Confederate armies had captured Lexington and Frankfort, controlled most of central Kentucky, and threatened the entire state.



Northern soldiers in Tennessee were quick to react to the Southern invasion. Moving from Nashville, Federal troops led by Major General Don Carlos Buell rushed to Bowling Green. As Bragg’s occupation of Munfordville (where the Louisville and Nashville Railroad passed) threatened Louisville, Buell hustled his forces to that city. Buell bolstered his force with thousands of recruits. To keep Smith’s force at bay he sent 20,000 men toward Frankfort. He then ordered 58,000 soldiers to converge upon Bragg’s army at Bardstown. Traveling down three separate roads, the presence of the blue-clad Northern troops forced Confederate officers at Bardstown to withdraw their men eastward to Perryville.

For months, a severe drought affected the area. As Union and Confederate forces maneuvered around Perryville, both man and horse suffered intensely for want of water. Only stagnant pools were available for the thousands of thirsty soldiers. After the Union army left Louisville, some of the first casualties were caused by this dry, hot weather. One Union colonel wrote, "Today we passed two men laying on the roadside having died from sunstroke . . ." The heat was unbearable, and Perryville’s Chaplin River was nearly dry.

On the night of October 7, the Southerners moved an advance unit of Arkansas troops between the dried waters of Bull Run and Doctor’s Creek, located west of town. When Union forces reached the area, a reconnaissance mission proved that small pools of water were available in Doctor’s Creek. The Union command ordered the water, and the heights overlooking it (called Peter’s Hill), secured. At 3:00 a.m. on October 8, Federal troops under Brigadier General Philip Sheridan moved on Peter’s Hill, driving back the Arkansas soldiers. The Battle of Perryville had begun.

Braxton Bragg, who had left his army to inaugurate a Confederate governor in Frankfort, traveled to Harrodsburg, where he hoped to concentrate his forces. Bragg soon learned that a Federal force had been encountered at Perryville. As Bragg believed that the main body of Union troops was near Frankfort, he ordered his men at Perryville to attack. After waiting to hear the sounds of battle, Bragg rushed to Perryville to learn why his orders had not been followed. Upon reaching town, the Confederate commander discovered that his staff had chosen a "defensive-offensive" strategy. An incensed Bragg, who did not realize that his army was outnumbered, realigned the Southern forces and again ordered his 16,000 men to attack.



At 2:00 p.m. on October 8, a Confederate division under Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham crossed the dry Chaplin River, climbed the bluffs above, and struck the left flank of Major General Alexander McCook’s corps of Union soldiers, which numbered approximately 22,000 men. Encountering heavy resistance from Federal artillery and infantry, Confederates under Brigadier General Daniel S. Donelson were hit hard until a Rebel brigade led by Brigadier General George Maney captured Union Captain Charles Parsons’ artillery, which anchored the Union left flank. Pushing the Federal army toward the west, Cheatham’s Confederates rolled back McCook’s left toward the Russell House, which served as McCook’s headquarters.

One Confederate infantryman later recalled the Southern assault. "Such obstinate fighting I never had seen before or since," he wrote. "The guns were discharged so rapidly that it seemed the earth itself was in a volcanic uproar. The iron storm passed through our ranks, mangling and tearing men to pieces."



A few miles to the south, as Rebel officers Thomas Jones and John C. Brown hit the Union center, Major General Simon B. Buckner’s Rebel division attacked McCook’s right flank above the Henry P. Bottom House. These veteran Southerners also pushed the Federal troops back toward the Russell House. Although driven back, one Union officer declared that "the numerous dead bodies found upon the ground in front of the position I occupied shows that the enemy were severely punished."

The Union soldiers reformed their lines near the Russell House and the crossroads of the Mackville and Benton roads (now Hayes May and Whites roads). Here, the Union army managed to check the Confederate advance. At this intersection, however, the Northern troops suffered some of their heaviest casualties. According to Union Colonel Michael Gooding, whose 22nd Indiana Infantry Regiment lost nearly 70 percent of its strength, the battle "raged furiously; one after one, my men were cut down . . . Fiercer and fiercer grew the contest and more dreadful became the onslaught. Almost hand-to-hand, they fought at least five times their own number, often charging upon them with such fearlessness and impetuosity as would force them to reel and give way . . ." Although the Union army checked the Rebel attack, General McCook, who had been ordered not to attack until the next day, admitted that his force "was badly whipped."

As Buckner and Cheatham’s divisions fought McCook’s I Corps, Confederate Colonel Samuel Powell attacked Charles C. Gilbert’s III Corps on Peters’ Hill west of town. Repulsed three times, Powell’s beaten force limped back to Perryville. South of town, Confederate cavalryman Joseph Wheeler kept Major General Thomas L. Crittenden’s II corps of Union soldiers at bay. With nearly 1,000 horsemen, Wheeler’s men marched and countermarched, making the Federal troops believe that they faced equal or superior numbers. After five hours of intense fighting, night fell upon the battlefield, ending the bloodshed.

The Confederates had won a tactical victory but encountered a strategic defeat. Although the Rebel army whipped the Federal left, Bragg was forced to withdraw his outnumbered Southerners from the region and from the state, ending his invasion and dashing the hopes of a Confederate Kentucky. The Battle of Perryville, which was the largest Civil War battle in the Commonwealth, killed and wounded more than 7,500 Union and Confederate troops.

The thousands of casualties lay scattered over hundreds of acres. A Federal cavalryman later described the horrific post-battle scene. "We found that the Rebels had left during the night," he wrote. "We marched over the battlefield. It was a horrible sight. For four miles the fields are strewn with the dead of both parties, some are torn to pieces and some in the dying agonies of death. The ambulances are unable to take all the wounded . . . A large pile of legs and arms are lying around that the Rebel doctors cut off."



For months, hundreds of wounded soldiers remained in Perryville under the care of the town’s 300 citizens. In addition, thousands of injured and sick troops convalesced in Danville, Harrodsburg, Bardstown, and other local communities. Union surgeon G. G. Shumard recalled that a "large number of sick and wounded were scattered about the country in houses, barns, stables, sheds, or wherever they could obtain shelter sufficient to protect them from the weather." Another doctor remarked that "Every house was a hospital, all crowded, with very little to eat." Although the battle was over, the number of dead continued to mount. "For months," wrote Perryville doctor Jefferson J. Polk, "hundreds of the wounded died every week." Bullet-holes and bloodstains in local homes remind modern inhabitants of the horrors that the Civil War brought to Perryville on that hot, dry day in October 1862.



As Union troops hastily buried their own dead in regimental plots, local residents were left to inter the dead Confederates. Local farmer, cabinetmaker and justice of the peace Henry P. Bottom, whose property was strewn with corpses, buried a majority of the Southern soldiers. With several field hands and neighbors, Bottom buried several hundred Confederates in two large pits. This mass grave is located in what is now the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site.

The Union dead were first buried at various sites near Perryville. "It seems hard to throw men all in together and heap earth upon them," wrote a member of the 21st Wisconsin Infantry, "but it is far better than to have them lie moldering in the sun." Most of the dead were quickly buried in shallow graves. As late as October 16, one Union officer noted that "There are hundreds of men being eaten by the buzzards and hogs." For weeks, the stench of death lingered over the battlefield. The Union dead were later moved to Camp Nelson in Jessamine County, and many Federal soldiers who died of wounds were buried in Danville, Lebanon, and other cemeteries around the Commonwealth.

These horrible conditions lasted in Perryville for months after the battle. Soldiers died every day until December 24, 1862. Although no one died on Christmas Eve, the deaths continued the following day. While the Perryville hospitals closed on March 23, 1863, the last recorded death directly attributed to the battle was on June 30, 1863, more than eight months after the fight.

Had the Confederate army won a decisive victory at Perryville, it is probable that the entire course of the Civil War would have been different. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. James M. McPherson has written, "It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Confederacy would have won the war if it could have gained Kentucky, and conversely, that the Union’s success in retaining Kentucky as a base for invasions of the Confederate heartland brought eventual Union victory." Not only was Perryville the battle for Kentucky, it was a battle for the entire nation.

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