The History of the Civil War in Kentucky: Chapter One

That war is hell is obvious in that it brings out the killers in our nature. And soon enough, the competition becomes even greater in the exercise of which side can kill more of the other.  Death, disease, and depravation are not romantic.  And they would all be brought to a focus in the terrible Civil War Battle at Perryville, Kentucky on October 8, 1862.

            In 1862, Confederate General Braxton Bragg had invaded Kentucky by almost magically transporting an entire Confederate Army by railroad around the Union Army of General Don Carlos Buell, which had invaded Tennessee.  It was a brilliant logistical accomplishment and had given Bragg the “jump” on Buell in what appeared to be a race to take Louisville, block the Ohio River, and threaten Cincinnati.  That would not come to be, for Bragg’s massive Army would turn east to Bardstown after crossing the Nolin River and allow Buell’s Army to “sneak” around them and reach Louisville first.

            Near Sonora Junction in Kentucky [U.S. Hwy 31W and Route 84], Union General Buell’s fast-moving Army had caught up with the Rear Guard of Confederate General Bragg’s Army.  Bragg had surprisingly pivoted away from taking Louisville, and turned his Army towards Hodgenville, New Haven, and Bardstown

Seven Confederate and three Union Soldiers died during a small engagement [Battle of Vinegar Hill], after which the Armies parted, speeding away to their separate destinations.  Buell to Louisville via West Point on the Salt River, and Bragg to Bardstown via New Haven on the Rolling Fork River.

A combination of opposing Armies, 100,000 men marching all around, were wary of engaging the other, until, almost by accident, they clashed at Perryville.  The Confederates would win a tactical victory there, but at a terrible cost.  The Union Army that had assembled before them was just too massive to confront.  Bragg’s invasion was over, as the Union Army would force the Confederates out of Kentucky, back through the Cumberland Gap.

Both Generals would be severely criticized for not crushing the other.  A Court of Inquiry would result in Buell being relieved of command.  Bragg would continue on in the Confederate military hierarchy, but become the object of discontent and complaint raised by his subordinate General Officers.  Yet Bragg was clearly experienced and a favorite of Confederate President, Jefferson Davis.

            But in 1861, just after the Civil War began, all of that was yet to come.  The Commonwealth of Kentucky had attempted to maintain neutrality after South Carolina began the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.  But Kentucky was all aflutter with young men eager to get into manly action.  That they didn’t know what they really wanted would become clearly evident when flurries of swashbuckling demonstrations would later develop into bloody battles of killing.

Early on, much of the action in Kentucky flashed up along the two North-South arteries flowing through the Commonwealth.  Not yet on the rivers, but along the stone-surfaced “Louisville and Nashville Turnpike” running from Louisville through West Point, and the recently completed “L & N Railroad” running through Elizabethtown.  So it is along these routes that the Civil War becomes the history described in this book.

It is an intriguing story, as you will find if you read further.  Even if these more real life military considerations were later overwhelmed by the massive death counts in future battles.  This would become a terrifying war.  But in Kentucky, things were just beginning to develop.

            Engaging pen and ink sketches in Harper’s Weekly, or in Leslie’s Illustrated, would bely the real pain and suffering inflicted by these opposing Armies.  Even if the swollen bodies shown in tin type daguerreotypes were too disgusting to realize.  And their drawings were unable to describe the true valor of these soldiers under fire.

The reality of war was even worse than that which could be described.  Most of these unfortunates died of disease and starvation.  They were marched into illness and fell into the arms of the “Captain of Death,” pneumonia.  Neither side would understand the enemy that they were really facing.  Sick men charging into cannon fire, surrounded by sheets of lead bullets.  Death swept the ground like horizontal rain over the parched drought lands of the warring summer season.

War is rightly remembered by the sacrifices made by those men throwing themselves onto the bayonets of the enemy.  Charging forward so that the ones behind them could reach past, stab, shoot, and choke their opponent to death.  For after the initial wave of screaming bullets, returned screaming waves of human killers.  Terrifying.

            But there is much more to war, and much more in its movements that is also interesting.  It is just that such supporting actions are smaller, or slower, or seemingly more ordinary in movement.  The marshalling of a population’s resources concentrating in support of their Armies.  To provide what is needed to meet the enemy and win those larger “decisive battles.”  And many such scenes of slaughter would be coming in this Civil War.

            There is much to be done to begin such movement, and the first things done in Kentucky were done in the Fall of 1861.  Before the Battles of Mill Creek, or the gunboat attacks on Forts Henry or Donelson, and certainly before Perryville.  They were the first things done when they were needed.  And many were done along those two arteries joining Kentucky to Tennessee, the old Louisville and Nashville Turnpike and the new Louisville and Nashville Railroad.  They run right through the center of this book.  Control them, and you control your journey herein!

            And this is where William Tecumseh Sherman first fits in.  In an embarrassing way, some would say, about the man whose victories would get Lincoln re-elected and who would go on to finish the job of slicing the South into two.

            But early on, when he was first commanding the Union Department of the Cumberland from Louisville, he was scared.  He was exceptionally concerned about General Simon Bolivar Buckner and his Confederate Army in Bowling Green.

Sherman imagined more than he knew.  And because of his response to what he feared, he was relieved of command here.  The newspapers said Sherman was crazy!

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