Mill Springs Battle
Posted on 24. Jan, 2012 by admin in What’s on
It’s a big year for history in Ken
tucky, with the 150th anniversaries of key American civil war battles fought in the state in 1862.
First up was the Battle of Middle Creek, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, on January 10, then the Battle of Mill Springs, celebrated this month with re-enactments on January 21 and 22. Spectacular large-scale re-enactments are billed for the real biggie, the Battle of Perryville, on October 8, one of the most strategically decisive, though much lesser-known, battles in the bloody four-year-long conflict.
Kentucky tried to be neutral in the war, the state split between Northern and Southern sentiment; officially the state sent no troops to either side. Unofficially, volunteers streamed into both armies. Unfortunate, too, was the fact Kentucky was too big a prize, for food, supplies and volunteers, to be neutral. It was also hugely strategic, even President Lincoln said: “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
The Confederates invaded in autumn 1861, not too successfully. Kentucky asked the North for help and sided with the Union.
Mill Springs was fought on January 19, between a relatively small force of Confederates and a larger advancing Union army from the North-west. They clashed at Mill Springs, by the present day town of Nancy in Pulaski County, eastern Kentucky, in the beautiful Cumberland Lakes region. Control this area and you control access to Tennessee, the south’s soft underbelly
The North won, routing 5,000-6,000 rebels, sending them scuttling back across the wide Cumberland river to Tennessee, the first major Union victory of the war. Casualties were light, given the slaughter of other battles, with only 39 Union men dead compared to 125 Confederates. However, the rebel defensive line in Kentucky was smashed, and the Confederates left behind 12 artillery pieces, 150 wagons, more than 1,000 horses and mules, and all of their dead and wounded. Not good PR.
The biggest casualty of the battle, some say, was General Crittenden, the Confederate general who was reportedly drunk during the fighting and removed to a desk job afterwards. We’d say the biggest casualty was Confederate Zollicoffer, a rather unlucky man, in war and death. He was killed in the battle after straying too near the Union line; remembered by a white oak tree on the battlefield; which then got destroyed by lightning.
