As the summer night of August 30, 1862 darkened over Richmond, Kentucky, it brought an end to a day-long series of battles centered on the small, rural market town. Confederate Maj. Gen. E. Kirby Smith was anxiously awaiting the report of his cavalry commander, Col. John S. Scott of Louisiana. Earlier that day Smith had directed Scott and his brigade to sweep to the north of Richmond and gain the rear of Union forces that Smith hoped would be driven in that direction by his small “Army of Kentucky.” Well after dark Colonel Scott rode into Richmond, and locating Smith, announced, “General, I’ve got them, have not counted them, but I have a ten acre lot full.” With that news, Smith ordered his troops to bivouac and he penned a brief account of the day’s battle to Gen. Braxton Bragg. Undoubtedly exhausted by the strain of battle during a day marked by oppressive heat and humidity, Smith was buoyed by the realization that he had won a great victory. Indeed, it was to be the most complete Confederate victory during the war. By day’s end, the Union “Army of Kentucky” had essentially ceased to exist and Kentucky lay open to the Confederates.1

Prelude

By mid-summer of 1862 the Union offensive into the Confederate heartland of Tennessee and the key strategic railroad hub of Chattanooga was grinding to a halt. The effort was plagued by aggressive Rebel cavalry contingents under Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan, who disrupted supply and rail lines deep in the Union rear, and hampered the march of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s forces across northern Alabama. Sensing an opportunity to reverse recent setbacks, relieve pressure on Chattanooga, and perhaps secure Kentucky for the Confederacy, Gen. Braxton Bragg and Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith convened in Chattanooga on July 31 to devise a joint strategy. This meeting was to have far reaching consequences that resulted in the advance of Confederate forces to the banks of the Ohio River.
At the time of the meeting, Bragg and Smith held independent commands. Kirby Smith was in charge of the Department of East Tennessee and its approximately 15,000 troops. Bragg commanded a separate department and was the field commander of the “Army of the Mississippi,” then located around Tupelo, Mississippi with a strength of around 30,000 men. Under this flawed command structure, both reported directly to the War Department at Richmond, Virginia. Any cooperation in movement or in battle relied in large part upon the two commanders maintaining a cordial relationship and effective communications. As events developed, the Kentucky Campaign was ultimately doomed to failure by the inability of Smith and Bragg to agree upon a specific, mutual objective, or to cooperatively link their forces when the critical crisis of the campaign arose.

Page 2 • Order this issue