Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 2.

[508] Regarding Kentucky as a part of the Confederacy, for her professed representatives were in the “Congress” of the conspirators at Richmond, the conscription act was enforced there at the point of the bayonet. And so the insane policy of “neutrality,” which had brought the war into Kentucky, yielded its fruit of wide-spread distress, until the whole people held out their hands imploringly to the National Government, which many of them had affected to despise, begging for deliverance from Buckner and Breckenridge, and other native and foreign “liberators.”

To that cry for help Buell responded, but in a manner that seemed to the impatient loyalists and suffering Kentuckians almost as if he was in league with Bragg for the punishment of that Commonwealth. He left Nashville on the 15th of September, and made his way to Louisville, in an apparent race with Bragg for that city. He won it in the course of a fortnight, but all that time his opponent was gathering in the spoils he came for without hindrance. The Government was dissatisfied, and relieved Buell, but at the urgent request of his general officers he was reinstated, with the understanding that he should take immediate measures for driving the marauders from Kentucky. Buell's army was then about one hundred thousand strong, while Bragg had not more than sixty-five thousand, including Kirby Smith's troops.

Buell turned toward his opponent on the 1st of October. His army was arranged in three corps, commanded respectively by Generals Gilbert, Crittenden, and McCook. General George H. Thomas, who was Buell's second in command,¹ had charge of the right wing. It moved over a broad space, its right under the immediate command of Crittenden, marching by way of Shepherdsville toward Bardstown, to attack Bragg's main force, and the remainder moving more in the direction of Frankfort. The right soon began to feel the Confederates. Bragg fell slowly back to Springfield, impeding Buell as much as possible by skirmishing, that his supply-trains might get a good start toward Tennessee.

At Springfield Buell heard that Kirby Smith had evacuated Frankfort and crossed the Kentucky River, and that Bragg was moving to concentrate his forces at Harrodsburg or Perryville. He at once ordered the central division of his army, under Gilbert, to march on the latter place; and, toward the evening of the 7th,

Oct., 1862.

the head of the column, under General R. B. Mitchell, fell in with a heavy force of Confederates within five miles of Perryville, drawn up in battle order. These were pressed back about three miles without fighting, when General Sheridan's division was ordered up to a position on heights near Doctor's Creek, and General Schoepff's was held in reserve. When these dispositions for battle were completed it was nightfall.

Buell was with Gilbert. Expecting a battle in the morning, he sent for