and at Augusta, in an attempt to cross the Ohio river and operate in the rear of Cincinnati, they were fiercely attacked by a body of Home Guards, under Dr. Bradford, who fired from the houses and behind shelter with deadly effect. Some forty Confederates were killed and wounded, and the movement across the Ohio checked. The Union loss was quite severe, and they were forced to surrender only after the burning of two squares of houses to dislodge them.

General Wharton's Confederate cavalry engaged the advance guard of Buell's army at Bardstown, and drove it back on the main body, with loss, on the 4th of October. An exciting hand-to-hand fight took place at Lawrenceburg between Colonel Scott's Confederate and Colonel R. T. Jacob's Federal regiments of cavalry. On the 7th, near Bardstown, the Seventyeighth Indiana regiment was surprised, captured, and paroled by Confederate troops. These are but a few of similar conflicts occurring almost daily between the shifting scouts and moving bodies of cavalry over the State, apart from the main commands of the two armies.

1Just as the Federal army was about to leave Louisville for its grand advance, an order came from Washington removing Buell from the chief command and appointing General George H. Thomas to succeed him. Buell had evidently not been a favorite with Halleck and Stanton since the campaign against Forts Henry and Donelson, and even the good fortune that attended his campaigns from Kentucky to Shiloh and return to Louisville, thrice victorious in as many great issues, could not stay the shafts of prejudice from that august and fruitful source of blundering interference. The patriotic and disinterested good sense of General Thomas discerned the mistake and its probable fatal consequences, and he promptly declined the command, with a protest against Buell's removal, which was heeded. Retaining command, the latter sent out a detachment of six thousand men, under General Dumont, through Shelbyville, as a demonstration on Frankfort, and another of like number, under General Sill, through Taylorsville, to deploy in the front of General Kirby Smith at Lawrenceburg, while he marched his main body of fifty-eight thousand, by way of Bardstown and Springfield, to the vicinity of Perryville.

Bragg was completely deceived and bewildered by these movements. Kirby Smith's army was now gathered about Frankfort, Versailles, and Law, renceburg, having been increased by the arrival of Stevenson with eight thousand troops and Marshall with thirty-five hundred, to over twenty thousand effective men. On the 4th, the empty ceremonies of inaugurating the venerable Richard Hawes provisional governor of Kentucky, as one of the Confederate States, were gone through with at Frankfort as the rear guards of Smith's army retired from the place, and in sight and hearing of Dumont's advancing artillery. So misled was General Bragg into the belief that Buell

1 Duke's History, p. 263; Collins' Annals of Kentucky; General Gilbert in Bivouac. Official reports.

BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE.

635 was marching his main army to attack Kirby Smith at Frankfort or Lawrenceburg that he ordered General Polk, on the 2d, to move his corps from Bardstown, through Bloomfield, toward Frankfort, to strike Buell in the flank and rear. On the 3d, General Polk ventured to disobey, in the following response to Bragg: "A condition of things on my right and left flank has developed, which I shadowed forth to you in my last note, which make compliance with your order eminently inexpedient. I shall, therefore, pursue a different course, assured that when the facts are submitted to you, you will justify my decision." Buell's army was then less than a day's march fronting Bardstown.

1On the 6th, Bragg ordered Kirby Smith to concentrate at Versailles, and make his headquarters at Harrodsburg, where Polk's corps was soon in camp, made up of Cheatham's and Withers' divisions; in all, some fifteen thousand men. Hardee was near Perryville, with the two divisions of Generals Buckner and R. H. Anderson, probably twelve thousand men. On the morning of the 8th, the corps of Hardee was re-enforced with Cheatham's division, Generals Bragg and Polk having moved up from Harrodsburg at the time. Of the Federal army, there were in front of these, McCook's corps, fourteen thousand strong, made up of Generals Rousseau's division, seven thousand; Jackson's, fifty-five hundred, and Gooding's brigade, fifteen hundred; also in reach, General Gilbert's Third army corps, eleven thousand, made up of Generals Mitchell's Ninth division, Sheridan's Eleventh division, and Schoepff's First division, a total of twenty-five thousand, opposed to which was about sixteen thousand Confederates, in three. divisions. Both armies had been preparing for battle since early morning, skirmishing while getting into position.

At half-past twelve in the afternoon, the Federals still delaying for General Thomas L. Crittenden's corps to come up, General Polk began a vigorous attack upon McCook's forces, and soon brought on a general engagement. The battle raged with fierceness and terrible carnage until nightfall along the entire line, with varying results, in the main in favor of the Confederates. The Federals were driven back from one to two miles along the whole line, losing fifteen pieces of artillery and four hundred prisoners, when nightfall put an end to the contest.

For the numbers engaged, the battle of Perryville is recorded as one of the bloodiest and most stubbornly contested of the war. General Bragg being present, in his official report, says: "For the time engaged, this battle was the severest and most desperately contested within my knowledge." General Buell, in his report, says: "This battle will stand conspicuous for its severity in the history of the rebellion." The Federal officials report, in the two corps, their loss at 931 killed, 3,018 wounded, and 397 missing, a total of 4,346. The Confederate losses altogether were 3,396 in the three divisions engaged. Both commanders-in-chief were misled in this battle.

I Collins' Annals of Kentucky; Duke's History; Gilbert in Bivouac. Official reports

General Buell, with headquarters but a few miles in the rear, failed to hear the roar of the cannon for three hours after the battle began, and was ignorant that the engagement was going on. General Bragg, from failure to keep himself posted of the enemy's movements, though advised by the subordinate generals, again lost the opportunity of concentration, and of signal victory. That confusion and vacillation which seemed to have beset him since his entrance into Kentucky, he yet acted under. The delusion, that the feint of Dumont on Frankfort was the forward movement of Buell's main army, left idly in camp Withers' division, at Harrodsburg, and Kirby Smith's army, at Versailles, thirty thousand men, which he might easily have concentrated with the three divisions at Perryville, and, with an army of near fifty thousand men, beaten the divided corps of the Federal army in succession, and retrieved by a splendid victory mainly what he had lost by the abandonment of the Munfordville route to Buell three weeks before.

Before the morning of the 9th, General Buell was re-enforced by the timely arrival of other detachments of his army, while General Bragg could only re-enforce with Withers' division. The latter chose, therefore, to fall back to Harrodsburg, and concentrate by ordering to that place the army of General Smith. Here the two armies, now in full strength, confronted each other, forty-five thousand Confederates, and fifty-four thousand Federals, after the losses at Perryville. Their lines were but three miles apart, and it was the general belief that General Bragg should, and would, deliver battle to his enemy now, on terms as nearly equal as is usual in the great contests of war. But two days before he had exposed three divisions of his troops to the possibility of being overwhelmed by Buell's whole army. Would he now fight that army with the threefold strength of concentration ?

The expectation of a great battle on that day was disappointed. General Bragg ordered his command to fall back upon his base, at Bryantsville, and, gathering up all supplies collected, he continued his march of retreat to Lancaster, where the army was divided, General Smith going out by Richmond and Cumberland Gap, and General Bragg by Crab Orchard, into Tennessee.

In the language of Duke's History of Morgan's Cavalry: "Thus ended a campaign from which so much was expected, and which, had it been successful, would have incalculably benefited the Confederate cause. Able writers have exerted all their skill in apologies for this campaign, but time has developed into a certainty the opinion then instinctively held by so many, that, with the failure to hold Kentucky, the best and last chance to win the war was thrown away. All the subsequent tremendous struggle was but the expiring efforts of a gallant people in what they believed to be a great cause." At the Confederate capital, the Richmond papers spoke of Bragg's Kentucky campaign as "a brilliant blunder, and a magnificent failure, profoundly disappointing and mortifying Southern people, and dashing their fond hopes of liberating Kentucky and Tennessee from the Federal hold."

Heavy skirmishing and cavalry rencounters were of frequent occurrence in the commotions caused by the movements of the two great armies. On the 10th, Colonel John Boyle, with the Ninth Kentucky cavalry, dashed into Harrodsburg and captured some sixteen hundred Confederates in the rear of Bragg's army, many of them the wounded from Perryville. General John H. Morgan, returning upon the route of the Confederate retreat, attacked the Fourth Ohio cavalry, who had occupied Lexington, killing and wounding a number, and capturing three hundred and fifty. The First and Twentieth Kentucky infantry fell upon Kirby Smith's rear guard in Clay county, killed and captured one hundred men, and cut off one hundred and fifty head of cattle. Morgan's cavalry, turning westward and passing in the rear of Buell's army, destroyed long sections of the Louisville & Nashville railroad, and burnt the bridges and trestlework south of Bowling Green.