War in Kentucky

War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville. By James Lee McDonough. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c. 1994. Pp. xvii, 386.

“I hope to have God on my side,” Lincoln is said to have once remarked, “but I must have Kentucky.” Such was the importance of the state that led to the struggles in the summer and fall of 1862, recounted by James McDonough in War in Kentucky. Concluding at the Battle of Perryville, the maneuvers of the Union and Confederate forces revealed their collective leadership deficiencies, a revelation that dominates McDonough’s narrative. The end result, a technical Union victory, represented the beginning of a downward spiral both in the West and nationwide from which the Confederacy would not pull out.

Following the bloodbath at Shiloh in April, 1862, Federal troops moved further south into northern Alabama and Mississippi. It was there, recounts McDonough, that the Northerners first encountered real local resistance. Under the command of Don Carlos Buell, the army practiced a benevolent form of occupation, forbidding soldiers from harassing peaceable citizens. Though this policy, critiqued at the time by some Union papers as “Rosewater” or “soft,” stands in stark contrast to the later “hard” war, it was consistent with Union policy at the time. McDonough contends that Buell cannot be held too responsible for what was standard army policy, though the soft stance created supply problems for the Union army. When word came that the Confederates threatened Kentucky Buell responded by pulling his forces to Nashville, an over-commitment of force to hold a well-defended city, then later towards Louisville as the Confederates advanced. Buell thus ceded the initiative the Braxton Bragg’s Confederate force, giving them free reign to maneuver and advance through Kentucky.

Leonidas Polk’ advance on Columbus in earlier months had already driven Kentucky into the arms of Lincoln and the Union. Grant’s subsequent capture of Forts Henry and Donelson only compounded the problem. After Albert Johnston’s death at Shiloh, Jefferson Davis appointed Braxton Bragg commander in the West instead of P. G. T. Beauregard due to the feud between Beauregard and the Confederate president. McDonough does not argue that Beauregard’s command would necessarily have resulted in Southern victory, but suggests the Creole’s ability to provide a singularity of purpose could not hurt the Southern cause. He might also have provided stronger leadership, and followed Bragg’s preferred plan of engaging Buell in middle Tennessee. Instead, influenced by Kirby Smith’s desire to conquer critical Kentucky, the Southerners launched an ultimately futile invasion. McDonough criticizes the Confederate maneuvers for the lack of concrete conception. The vagueness of correspondence between Generals Bragg, Smith, Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price suggests that the advance into Kentucky had no clear objectives.

This disjointed assault on Kentucky was heavily reliant on the reaction of the state’s people. Bragg gambled that the state contained a great number of Southern sympathizers prepared to rally around the Confederate flag. This proved to be a great miscalculation. There had never been enough sentiment to sustain and drastically increase the number of Confederate troops, and Bragg’s army advanced through territory with at best mixed support. Still, the Confederates maintained the mobile initiative, and advanced north. Though they won smaller victories at Richmond and Munfordville, the Confederates were unable to draw Buell’s main army into the field.

At its core, argues McDonough, the battle at Perryville on October 8 was about water. The town itself was fairly isolated, providing little beyond several drinkable streams. In the dry summer of 1862, though, this resource was critical, and the two armies stumbled upon one another in its pursuit. Once the two sides joined in battle, the lack of leadership on both sides revealed itself again. The lack of communication between Buell and his generals, brought on by a “disturbing looseness” in the command structure, prevented the Union leader from recognizing the situation at hand. Buell inadvertently kept a number of men in reserve, not bringing his force to bear upon Bragg’s position. From Bragg’s perspective, this represented the direct engagement he sought, and it would have been with equal troop strength. In the end, though, the Confederate’s strong defensive position caused Bragg to hold back, waiting for a Buell assault that never came. Unable to engage Buell on his own terms, and facing a lack of support from the citizenry, Bragg retreated from Kentucky.

In the end, McDonough criticizes generals on both sides. Buell remains more fortunate than Bragg to some degree, as the Union commander could at least claim victory. Bragg’s unclear plan of attack and his inability to coordinate the army prevented the Confederates from conquering the state. Instead, the South would never again legitimately threaten to take Kentucky. McDonough contends that Southern reverses in the West, beginning at Forts Henry and Donelson and continuing through Perryville, represented real victories for the Union cause. His emphasis on the leadership, and particularly its deficiencies, explains a critical theatre of the war.

Texas Christian University Keith Altavilla

War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville. By James Lee McDonough. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

In War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville James McDonough focuses on the Western Theater of the Civil War during the late summer and fall of 1862. This period, in both the Eastern and Western Theaters, was very important in the Confederacy’s struggle for survival. Yet history has focused most attention on the Eastern Theater. The events from Shiloh to Perryville, according to McDonough, were very significant, having immense strategic implications. “Without an understanding of these happenings . . . one’s view of the Civil War in 1862 will be incomplete and, worse, markedly unbalanced.” (xii)

McDonough begins with a description of the events that took place throughout the winter and spring of 1862. During this time, the Union launched a joint army-navy offensive that succeeded in capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. He describes these victories as a great triumph for the Federals and really the first of the Civil War. They presented the Union with many opportunities to threaten, exploit, and weaken the Confederacy. The Confederates began a major concentration of their forces and attempted to throw back the Federal advance. They failed, however, and lost the battle at Shiloh which McDonough describes as “one of the most notable and closely contested of all Civil War engagements.” (xi)

After the Union had inflicted more damage upon the Confederacy through the capture of New Orleans, the fall of Memphis, and the breaking of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, the Rebel army prepared to attempt to counter such victories. According to McDonough, this campaign is not nearly as well known as the Battle of Shiloh where the Rebels had victory within their reach for a few hours, only to have history record a Union triumph. The campaign, in the hands of General Braxton Bragg, originally began with the plan to face General Buell in Middle Tennessee. Instead, Bragg began to listen to General Edmund Kirby Smith, who had by this time caught “Kentucky fever.” (78)

The Rebel generals understood the importance of Kentucky to their fight, as did Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln went so far as to say that “Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of [Washington, D. C.].” (61) Instead of victory in the Kentucky campaign, Bragg showed what would happen when command lacked unification and a clearly defined military objective. The southern objective, loosely conceived, would be to bring Kentucky into the Confederacy. Whether this meant taking cities such as Lexington or Louisville, some point on the Ohio River, or some other strategic location was never defined. The only way that the Confederate invasion of Kentucky could succeed was if the Kentuckians were to rise up and take arms for the South by the tens of thousands.

During this campaign the Confederate Army fought a few small battles in Kentucky. They also fought a larger battle at Perryville over, according to McDonough, not much more than water. After the battle of Perryville Bragg had a great opportunity to fight Buell with at least equal numbers. Instead he sat on his position, which he believed better suited for the defensive, and waited for Buell to attack, and of course Buell did not. Here, Bragg missed a golden opportunity to possibly take care of Buell once and for all. Still, the Confederate general had already concluded that the Kentuckians would not rise to support the Rebel army. Without a large number of Kentucky recruits he realized that the campaign could achieve nothing of significance. Having begun the campaign with great optimism, “it was a disillusioned and disheartened force that retreated into Tennessee.” (310)

McDonough gives a thorough account of the Kentucky campaign, from its conception after Shiloh to its end at Perryville. He devotes a fair amount of time to those officers that played a major role in the campaign for both the Union and Confederacy. This book is well written and shows the disappointment encountered by the Confederacy when they realized that Kentuckians did not desire to be liberated from the Union. McDonough sheds a very interesting light on a very important period of the Civil War.