Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[333] was fought by our troops with a gallantry and persistent determination to conquer, which the enemy could not resist; and though he was largely more than two to our one, he was driven from the field with terrible loss. Night closed the operation just as a third corps of the enemy threw the head of its columns against our left flank. We had entire possession of the battle-field, with thousands of the enemy's killed and wounded, several batteries of artillery, and six hundred prisoners.

In the progress of the engagement, we had advanced so far as to expose our left flank to the third corps under McCook, just arrived from the direction of Lebanon. Gen. Bragg, therefore, caused our line, which rested upon the field till midnight, to fall back to its original position.

Assured that the enemy had concentrated his three corps against him, and finding that his loss had already been quite heavy in the unequal contest against the two corps under Crittenden and Gilbert, Gen. Bragg gave the order to fall back at daylight on Harrodsburg, and sent instructions to Smith to move his command to form a junction with him, at that place. Thence, on the 11th, the whole force was retired upon Bryantsville.

Gen. Bragg was now no longer able to attack and rout an enemy largely superiour in numbers; and to evacuate Kentucky had become an imperative necessity. The season of autumnal rains was approaching; the rough and uneven roads leading over the stupendous mountains of Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, to and through Cumberland Gap, would then become utterly impassable to an army. Should Bragg remain till then, and meet with a reverse, his army would be lost. Accordingly all necessary arrangements were made, and the troops put in motion by two columns, under Polk and Smith, on the 13th October for Cumberland Gap. After a rapid march, with some privations in the absence of baggage trains, which had been sent ahead, the Confederate forces passed the Gap with immaterial loss from the 19th to the 24th of October.

This retreat of Bragg was certainly a sore disappointment to the hopes which his first movements in Kentucky had occasioned and his sensational despatches had unduly excited. His campaign was long a theme of violent criticism in the Confederacy. The detachment of Kirby Smith and the operation on different lines in Kentucky; the loss of the opportunity at Mumfordsville; and the failure to assemble all the Confederates in the field at Perryville, were pointed out as so many errours in the campaign. But the popular mind in criticising military operations is too prone to for get what is accomplished, while pointing out what might have been attempted. The Kentucky campaign was in a great measure a Confederate success. Though compelled to yield a portion of the valuable territory from which we had driven the enemy, the fruits of the campaign were large. With a force enabling us at no time to put more than forty thousand men, of all arms, and in all places in battle, we had redeemed North