History of Morgan's Cavalry

It was certainly not expecting too much of General Bragg, as commander-in-chief of the Confederate forces in Kentucky, to expect that he would (after this was done) make up his mind whether he was going to fight or not, without farther delay. If he did not intend to fight, would it not have been wiser to have marched back on Nashville, while Buell was marching on Louisville, to have taken that place and to have established himself on the banks of the Cumberland with less of loss, fatigue, and discontent among his troops, than existed when after his long, harassing, wearying marches through the mountains, he halted at Murfreesboro' much later? Kirby Smith could have remained in Kentucky long enough to collect and secure all the supplies – he had demonstrated that he could take care of himself, and if he had been hard-pressed, he could have retreated more rapidly than any pursuer could follow. If General Bragg did intend to fight, why did he not concentrate his army and fight hard?

After Buell marched to Louisville (which he reached on the 29th of September), Bragg took position at and about Bardstown. Our line, including General Smith's forces, may be described as running from Bardstown, on the extreme left, through Frankfort and Lexington, to Mount Sterling on the right flank. It was an admirable one. However threatened on front or flanks, the troops could be marched to the threatened points, by excellent roads. The base at Bryantsville was perfectly secure – roads ran from it in every direction – and it was a place of immense natural strength. The force available, for the defense of this line, was quite forty-nine thousand infantry, General Bragg's Staff officers represent the force of infantry (which entered the State with General Bragg) to have been twenty-five thousand. General Smith's infantry forces (including Marshall) numbered twenty-four thousand [so estimated by General Smith himself]. There were perhaps one hundred and thirty pieces of artillery in all. The cavalry, all told, was about six thousand Strong (including Morgan and Buford), making a grand total of about fifty-six thousand men.

Buell moved out from Louisville on the 1st of October. His advance was made just as might have been anticipated, and as many had predicted. Not caring to involve his whole army in the rough Chaplin and Benson hills, he sent detachments toward Frankfort and Lawrenceburg, to guard against any movement on Louisville, and to distract Bragg's attention from his (Buell's) main design, and make him divide his army. In this latter intention he perfectly succeeded. The bulk of his army marched through Bardstown and Springfield to Perryville, to get in Bragg's rear and upon his line of retreat. The force sent to Frankfort, five or six thousand strong, under Dumont, broke up the inaugural ceremonies of the Provisional Government, which General Bragg, as if in mockery of the promises he had so lavishly and so confidently made to his own Government, and to the people of Kentucky, and of the hopes he had excited, had instituted. He made one of the first and best men of the State, a man of venerable years and character, held in universal respect for a long life of unblemished integrity, beloved for his kind, open, manly nature, and especially honored by the Southern people of Kentucky for his devotion to the cause – General Bragg made this old man, who had been unanimously indicated as the proper man for Provisional Governor of Kentucky, tell the people, who crowded to listen to his inaugural address, that the State would be held by the Confederate army, cost what it might. At the very time that General Bragg so deceived Governor Hawes, and made him unwillingly deceive his people, the Confederate army had already commenced to retreat.

This force, which came to Frankfort, was the same which General Smith was prepared to fight at Versailles, its real strength not being at first known. A day or two afterward it came out upon the Versailles road, and was ambushed by Colonel John Scott, and driven back with smart loss. General Smith, hearing that the enemy were advancing in force to Lawrenceburg, and that they had occupied that place with an advance guard, ordered Buford to drive them out with his cavalry, and followed with his whole force. The establishment of the enemy at Lawrenceburg, and upon the road thence to Harrodsburg, would have completely cut off General Smith from General Bragg. The force advancing toward Lawrenceburg, was Sill's division, perhaps six or seven thousand strong in effectives. This division had diverged from the main army at the same time with Dumont's.

General Smith's forces were arranged at Lawrenceburg (which was not occupied by the enemy) and on the road thence to Harrodsburg on the 6th. Sill's division fell back across Salt river and into the rugged Chaplin hills, pressed by a portion of General Smith's infantry, Colonel Thomas Taylor's brigade in advance. Several hundred prisoners were taken. The position of General Smith's forces was not materially changed during that day and the next, although they continued to draw nearer to Harrodsburg. The main body of the enemy had in the mean time concentrated its marching columns and moved to the vicinity of Perryville, 58,000 strong, on the evening of the 7th.

The detachments which advanced to Frankfort and toward Lawrenceburg, were not more than 12,000 strong in all. So rugged and difficult of passage is the country through which these detachments had to pass, that a comparatively small force could have prevented their junction at Lawrenceburg and held both at bay, leaving the bulk of the Confederate army free to concentrate at Perryville. Even had their junction been permitted, three thousand such cavalry as Bragg had at his disposal could have retarded their march to Harrodsburg for several days. They could not have forced their way along the road in less than two or three days, and as many would have been required to make a detour and join Buell. In that time the battle of Perryville could have been decided. But so completely was General Bragg in the dark about Buell's movements that, when he first heard of the advance from Louisville, he supposed it was a movement of the whole Federal army upon Frankfort, and he ordered General Polk "to move from Bardstown, by way of Bloomfield, toward Frankfort, to strike the enemy in flank and rear," while General Smith should take him in front. This order was evidently issued under an unaccountable and entire misapprehension of the true state of affairs, but showed a nerve and purpose which promised well. General Bragg must certainly, when he issued it, have supposed that General Buell's whole army was coming from that direction. How strange is it that a commander who could thus resolve to fight his foes, when he believed them to be united, should fear to encounter them separately. Whatever may be the verdict upon General Polk's disobedience of orders, whether it was one of those cases in which a subordinate can rightfully exercise this discretion or not, the fact of General Bragg's incompetency looms up in unmistakable proportions.

The most remarkable feature of General Bragg's conduct was this strange, unexampled vacillation. There was perhaps never afforded such an instance of perfect infirmity and fickleness of purpose. He had, there can be little doubt, resolved to retreat without delivering battle before the 1st of October. He nevertheless sought to fight at Frankfort (as has been seen) a few days afterward. Again, immediately afterward, he did his best to avoid battle when it could have been delivered (as all but himself thought) under far more favorable circumstances. No one now doubts, I presume, that General Bragg fought at Perryville with a fragment of his army, not to win a victory, but to check the enemy and cover his retreat.

After General Polk moved to Perryville, General Bragg, of course, learned of the advance of the enemy in that direction, and must have known that it was in strong column, or he would not have permitted sixteen thousand troops to collect there to oppose it. He was still in error regarding the other movements, and left the larger part of his army to confront the forces maneuvering about Lawrenceburg and Frankfort. One glance at the map will show the reader that, if the enemy was really advancing in heavy columns by these different routes, it was clearly General Bragg's best policy to have struck and crushed (if he could) that body threatening him from the south. If he crushed that his line of retreat would be safe, and he could have fought the other at his leisure, or not at all, as he chose. He could have fought (if it had continued to advance) at Bryantsville, or gone after and attacked it. If, on the contrary, he had concentrated to fight at Frankfort or Lawrenceburg, defeat, with this other force on his line of retreat, would have been ruinous. Even complete and decisive victory would have left him still in danger, having still another army to defeat or drive away. He would have been, in either case, between his foes, preventing their junction, and in a situation to strike them in succession; but in the one case his rear was safe, and in the other it was threatened.

With the true trimming instinct, he elected to take a middle course; he divided his army, and sought to meet both dangers at the same time. Is it saying too much that he was saved from utter destruction by the heroic courage, against vast odds, of that fragment of his army which fought at Perryville? It is the popular idea that a commander is out-generaled when he is deceived. Military phraseology can mystify the popular mind, but it can not eradicate from it this idea. Buell certainly deceived Bragg, and by sending detachments, numbering in all not more than twelve thousand, through a country from which a mere handful of men could have prevented them from debouching, he kept thirty thousand men, the bulk of General Bragg's army, idle, and rendered them useless until the game was decided.

After the battle of Perryville (where he certainly got the better of the forces opposed to him) – an earnest of what might have been done if the whole army had been concentrated – and after an accurate knowledge had been obtained, of how Sill's and Dumont's detachments had deceived him into the belief that they were the whole Federal army – General Bragg had his entire army concentrated at Harrodsburg. The two armies then fairly confronted each other, neither had any strategic experiments to fear, on flank or rear, for Sill's division was making a wide and prudent circuit to get to Buell, and Dumont was stationary at Frankfort. It would have been a fair, square, stand up fight. It is, now, well known that there was not the disparity in numbers which General Bragg and his friends claimed to have existed. There was less numerical inequality, between the armies, than there has been on many battlefields – where the Confederate arms have been indisputably victorious. Buell's strength was less than at any other period of the eight or ten days that a battle was imminent. Sill had not gotten up – the Federal army was fifty-eight thousand strong – minus the four thousand killed and wounded at Perryville, and the stragglers. Buell had in his army, regiments and brigades, of raw troops, thirty-three thousand in all. Bragg had not more than five thousand; most of them distributed among veteran regiments. There were no full regiments, nor even full companies of recruits in Bragg's army, except in the Kentucky cavalry commands. The two armies faced each other, not more than three miles apart. The belief was almost universal, in each army, that next morning we would fight. The troops thought so, and, despite the pouring rain, and their uncomfortable bivouacs, were in high and exultant spirits. I know, for I saw them late in the night, that some officers of high rank confidently looked for battle, and were cheerful, and sanguine of victory.

What General Bragg really intended to do that night – perhaps he himself only knows – and it is quite as probable that even he does not know. He retreated on the next morning to Bryantsville. There was no undignified haste about this movement – the troops moved off deliberately, and in such order, that they could have been thrown quickly, if it had become necessary, into line of battle. General Bragg manifested no great anxiety to get away from the vicinity of his enemy, and Buell certainly manifested no strong desire to detain him.

On the next day (the 12th), the army remained at Bryantsville, and took up its march for Lancaster about ten o'clock of that night. It reached Lancaster on the morning of the 13th, and divided. General Smith going to Richmond, and over the Big hill, to Cumberland Gap, General Bragg with the troops which had come into Kentucky under his immediate command, passing through Crab Orchard.

It was hoped, and thought probable, that Buell would overtake and force Bragg to fight at Crab Orchard. He did, indeed, come very near doing so. Sending one division to Lancaster, he moved with the bulk of his army toward Crab Orchard. He failed, however, to intercept Bragg, and the latter moved on out of Kentucky.

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, that opinion then instinctively held by so many, that with the failure to hold Kentucky, our best and last chance to win the war was thrown away.

Let the historian recall the situation, and reflect upon the influences which in the, then, condition of affairs were likely to control the destinies at stake, and he will declare, that with this retreat the pall fell upon the fortunes of the Confederacy.

All the subsequent tremendous struggle, was but the dying agony of a great cause, and a gallant people. At that period the veteran Federal army of the West was numerically much inferior to what it ever was again; and even after the accession of the recruits hastily collected at Louisville, it was much less formidable than it subsequently became.

The Confederate army was composed of the veterans of Shiloh, and the soldiers formed in the ordeal of Corinth. It was as nearly equal to the Federal army, in numerical strength, as there was any chance of it ever being, and the character of its material more than made up for any inequality in this respect. No man, who saw it in Kentucky, will doubt that it would have fought up to its full capacity. Never was there a more fiery ardor, a more intense resolution pervading an army, than that one felt, when expecting a battle which should decide whether they were to hold Kentucky, or march back again, carrying the war once more with them to their homes and firesides. Not even on the first day of Shiloh, when it seemed that they could have charged the rooted hills from their bases, were those troops in a temper to make so desperate a fight. But a doting Æolus held the keys which confined the storm. It will be difficult for any one who will carefully study the history of this period, to avoid the conclusion that it was the crisis of the war. First let the military situation be considered. While at almost every point of subordinate importance the Confederates were holding their own, they were at those points, where the war assumed its grand proportions, and the issue was vital, carrying every thing before them.

The Confederate Government had at length adopted the policy of massing its troops, and the effect was instantly seen. In Virginia, General Lee's onset was irresistible. His army burst from the entrenchments around Richmond, like the lava from the volcano, and the host of McClellan, shrank withered, from its path. Driving McClellan to his new base, and leaving him to make explanations to his soldiery, "Uncle Robert" fell headlong upon Pope, and Pope boasted no more. Forcing the immense Federal masses disintegrated and demoralized back to Washington, General Lee crossed the Potomac and pushed into Maryland. Jackson took Harper's Ferry, while General Lee fought the battle of Antietam with forty thousand men, and again crippled McClellan.

Although the Confederate army recrossed the Potomac on the 18th of September, McClellan did not follow, but remained inactive and by no means certain (as his dispatches show) that his great adversary would not return to attack him. It was not until late in October, that the Federal army again advanced, and its march was then slow and irresolute. It will be seen then, that on the 17th, the day on which Bragg took Munfordsville, General Lee was fighting in Maryland. Ought not General Bragg to have risked a battle (with his superior force) in Kentucky, which (if successful), would have ruined the army opposed to him and have laid the whole Northwest open to him, unless McClellan had furnished the troops to oppose him, and have placed himself at the mercy of Lee?

General Bragg did not (of course) know, on the 17th of September, 1862, that the battle of Antietam was being fought, but he knew that General Lee had achieved great successes, and that he was marching into Maryland. Again, what effect are we at liberty to suppose that a decisive victory won by General Bragg, at Perryville, on the 6th of October, would have had upon the general result. General Buell, pressed by Bragg's entire army, would have had some trouble to cross the Ohio river, after reaching Louisville; and the defense of the Western States would have been then intrusted with many misgivings to his shattered army. And yet the West would have been left with no other defense, unless the army of the Potomac had (in the event of such a necessity) been weakened and endangered, that reinforcements might go to Buell. It may be said that all this is hypothetical. Of course it is. But what General ever yet inaugurated and conducted a campaign, or planned and fought a battle, and banished such hypotheses altogether from his calculations? Why then should they be forbidden in the criticism of campaigns and battles? It is not infallibly certain that General Bragg could have defeated Buell. Nothing is positively certain in a military sense, not even the impregnability of a work built by a West Pointer, and pronounced so by a committee of his classmates. War is a game of various and varying chances. What I mean to urge, is, that General Bragg should, under all the circumstances, have, by all the rules of the game, risked the chances of a battle. But if there were strong military reasons why an effort should have been made to accomplish decisive results in this campaign, there were other and even stronger reasons for it, to be found in the political condition, North and South. The Confederacy, alarmed by the reverses of the winter and spring, had just put forth tremendous and almost incredible efforts. The South had done all that she could be made to do by the stimulus of fear. Increased, aye, even sustained exertion could have been elicited from her people, only by the intoxication of unwonted and dazzling success. No additional inducement could have been offered to the soldiers, whom pride and patriotism had sent into the field, to remain with their colors, but the attraction of brilliant victories and popular campaigns. No incentive could have lured into the ranks the young men who had evaded the conscription and held out against the sentiment of their people, but the prospect of a speedy and successful termination of the war. But there are few among those who were acquainted with the people of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, and their temper at that time, who will not agree with me, that a great victory in Kentucky, and the prospect of holding the State, perhaps of crossing the Ohio, would have brought to Bragg's army more Tennesseeans, Alabamians and Mississippians, than were ever gotten into the Confederate service, during the remaining two years and a half of the war. Such a victory would have undoubtedly added more than twenty thousand Kentuckians to the army, for accurate computation has been made of that many who were ready to enlist, as soon as Bragg had won his fight. Five thousand did enlist while it was still uncertain whether the Confederate army would remain in the State. It is not perfectly certain that more than five thousand volunteers were ever obtained, in the same length of time, in any seceded State. All of these men, too, followed the army away from Kentucky. Some of General Bragg's friends have assigned, as one reason, why he left Kentucky without an effort to hold her, that he was disappointed in not receiving more recruits from the State. It is highly probable that such was the case. If an able General had marched into his enemy's territory, depending upon fighting an early and hardly contested battle against a veteran army, with the assistance of recruits just obtained, and whom he could not have yet armed, his friends would have concealed (if possible) his design, or if unable to do so, would have confessed it a weakness unworthy of their chief, for which they blushed. But it is not difficult to believe that General Bragg entertained just such a plan. The Kentuckians had not the confidence in the ultimate success of the Confederate cause, to induce them to enlist in the Confederate service, risking every thing, immediately sacrificing much, as they did so, when they saw a magnificent Confederate army decline battle with a Federal force, certainly not its superior. General Bragg was not only a very shrewd judge of human nature, but even he might have known that the irresolution and timidity he showed from the first day he put foot in Kentucky, was not the way to inspire confidence in any people – it certainly was the worst method he could have adopted to win the people of Kentucky.

And now, to consider the effect which such a Confederate success would have in the North: I do not allude to the effect it would have had upon the wishes and plans of President and Cabinet, upon the views of the Congress, nor upon the arrangements of politicians and the patch work of their conventions, but to the direction it might have given the popular mind and the popular feeling. Men who were then serving in the Confederate army, know little, of course, of the temper of the Northern people, at that time, but many were impressed with the idea, then, strengthened by conversation with Northern men since, that, if ever the Northern people doubted of subjugating the South, it was at that period.

Immense efforts had been made, immense sums had been expended, immense armies had been sent against them, and still the Southern people were unconquered, defiant, and apparently stronger than ever. Would it have been possible to strengthen this doubt into a conviction that the attempt to subdue the Southern people was hopeless, and the war had better be stopped? Volunteering was no longer filling the Federal armies. Now, if the Confederate arms had been incontestably triumphant, from the Potomac to the Ohio, if Northern territory had been in turn threatened with general invasion, and if the option of continuing a war, thus going against them, or making peace, had been submitted at the critical moment to the Northern people, how would they have decided? Would they have encouraged their Government to draft them – or would they have forced the Government to make peace? The matter was, at any rate, sufficiently doubtful to make it worth while to try the experiment. When that scare passed off, it is the firm conviction of more than one man who "saw the war out" that the last chance of Confederate independence passed away.

The Northern people then learned, for the first time, their real strength; they found that bounties, and the draft, and the freedmen, and importations from the recruiting markets of the whole world, would keep their armies full, and nothing could have made them despond again. The war then became merely a comparison of national resources. Something was undoubtedly gained by the march into Kentucky, but how little in comparison with the golden opportunity which was thrown away. Had the combatants been equally matched, the result of this campaign might have been a matter for congratulation; but when the Confederacy was compelled, in order to cope with its formidable antagonist, to deal mortal blows in every encounter, or come out of each one the loser, the prisoners, artillery, and small arms taken, the recovery of Cumberland Gap and a portion of Tennessee, and the supplies secured for the army, scarcely repaid for the loss of prestige to Confederate generalship, and the renewal of confidence in the war party of the North.