[
455]
No. 4.
It is not without anxiety that I now approach that part of the campaign in
Kentucky which brought disaster upon our arms.
Hitherto I have had to speak only of success and award well merited praise; but it devolves upon me now to deal with failure, and to try to show wherein lay the causes of it. To ascertain how far defeat is the result of inevitable accident, and how far it comes from errors which should have been avoided, to what extent fortune intervenes to wrest away fruits fairly won, and to what extent they are lost by faults of conception or of execution, requires a knowledge of facts in detail and an accuracy and nice discrimination of judgment not easily attained.
It is natural, therefore, to approach with diffidence and much misgiving the discussion of these grave and difficult questions.
On the 13th of September
General Bragg reached
Glasgow, Ky., and on the 15th advanced on Mumfordsville, a fortified post.
On the afternoon of the 16th an unsuccessful assault was made by
Chalmer's brigade; but during the night the enemy was surrounded, and cannon placed in position on all the commanding eminences, and the following morning the garrison, 4,000 men, surrendered with all their arms and munitions.
These were the first brilliant and auspicious fruits of
General Bragg's rapid march from
Chattanooga.
The hopes of the army, and all the friends of the
Southern cause, were raised to the highest pitch.
The strategy of the campaign was, up to this point, completely successful in all quarters.
Buell, hemmed in at
Bowling Green, would, it was firmly believed, be compelled to give battle on such disadvantageous terms that nothing but defeat and destruction awaited him.
Up to the time of
General Bragg's entry into
Kentucky the two invading armies, pursuing routes widely asunder, and without communication, were entirely distinct.
General Smith held the independent command of the Department of East Tennessee, while
General Bragg had lately superseded
General Beauregard in that of
Mississippi.
It is true that the troops with which
Smith won the
battle of Richmond belonged to
Bragg's army, having been detached by the latter to assist the former in his movement into
Kentucky; but
General Smith had a fine army of his own, more than 20,000 strong, which for months he had been engaged in organizing and disciplining with great care and
