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In the summer of 1862, Confederate generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith organized plans to invade Kentucky. In an attempt to gather supplies, enlist recruits, and to pull Union troops from Tennessee, these Southerners instigated a two-pronged advance into the Commonwealth.
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 Bragg's invasion. Moving from Nashville, Federal troops under 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 nearly 22,000 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 troops forced Confederate officers at Bardstown to withdraw their troops eastward to the sleepy hamlet of 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 road side having died from sunstroke. . . " The heat was unbearable, and Perryville's Chaplin River was completely dry.
The Southern troops had 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 (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 learned that his staff had chosen a "defensive-offensive" strategy. An incensed Bragg realigned the Southern forces and again ordered his 16,000 troops to attack.
At 2:00 p.m. on October 8, Confederate forces under General Benjamin F. Cheatham crossed the dry Chaplin River, climbed the bluffs above, and struck the left flank of General Alexander McCook's corps of Union soldiers, which numbered approximately 22,000 men. Encountering heavy resistance from Federal artillery and infantry, Cheatham's Tennesseans rolled back McCook's left towards 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, General Simon B. Buckner's Confederates attacked McCook's right above the H. P. Bottom house. These veteran Southerners also pushed the Federal troops back towards the Russell House. The Union soldiers reformed their lines near the structure and managed to check the Confederate advance. General McCook, who had been ordered not to attack until the next day, said, "I was badly whipped."
As Buckner and Cheatham fought McCook's I Corps, Confederate Col. Samuel Powell attacked Charles C. Gilbert's III Corps on Peter's 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. Night fell upon the battlefield, ending the bloodshed after five hours of fighting.
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, thus 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 killed and wounded lay scattered over hundreds of acres. A Federal cavalryman later described this 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. "For months," noted a local doctor, "hundreds of the wounded died every week." Bullet-holes and bloodstains in local structures 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, local inhabitants were left to deal with the dead Confederates. A majority of the Southern soldiers were buried by Squire Henry P. Bottom, who found piles of corpses on his property. 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, however, 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.
