Perryville Battle, Authentic America
It’s a short hop in the car along the scenic 68 highway from Harrodsburg and Lexington to Perryville, a small town whose nearby Chaplin Hills hosted Kentucky’s biggest and bloodiest battle of the American civil war, the tumultuous conflict now marking its 150th anniversary right across the US.
The idyllic drive belies any notion of the bloodbath in October 1862. The first sign that any fighting took place amid the green rolling hills is the cutesy log cabin shops dotting the narrow undulating roads selling civil war memorabilia, marked usually by a Confederate flag fluttering high above. (Why is it that the loser’s flag is always most marked in war memorabilia shops?)
At Perryville, a 20,000-strong part of a Confederate expedition from Mississippi led by General Bragg tried to achieve the impossible: occupy a northern state. He marched all the way to near Louisville and Cincinnati, as much a drive for new recruits and supplies as for any political goal, but was pushed back until the head-on clash with part of a 55,000-strong Union force, leading to appalling loss of life. (Perryville, a small battle in civil war terms, had one of the highest casualty percentages of the entire war.)
It seems too idyllic a place for carnage, but casting an eye over the preserved 7,000-acre battlefield and wandering around the civil war pathway on a hot, sunny day, you can imagine the battle – grey-clad infantry and cavalry clashing with blue uniformed troops over rambling green rolling hills, firing behind makeshift wooden horse fences, fighting through clumps of trees, over grassy knolls and wading through glistening brooks. If you visit on 1-2 October 2011, re-enactments are held.
If you visit in summer, the heat, too, offers a reminder that Perryville was a fight for water as much as glory – both armies were fighting a lengthy drought and the hills boasted streams and brooks; the fighting actually started as both sides foraged for water.
The battle was part of the South’s “impossible dream” to occupy a northern state. Not that Kentucky was northern, politically. It was neutral, its state legislature allowing men to enlist on either side, making it perhaps more than any other state the most divided. Abraham Lincoln, from Kentucky himself, said: “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly to lose the whole game.” Kentucky is still largely split to this day; in a good way – as any Kentuckian will tell you, the state boasts both northern sensibilities and southern hospitality.
The 7,000-acre battlefield park has a great, albeit small museum, housed in a log cabin on a hill overlooking the field, a centre attracting 100,000 visitors a year and boasting great multimedia displays, neatly explaining both the civil war, how it affected Kentucky and what happened at Perryville, not least shining light on the incredibly confusing fog of war.
Not least General Polk’s bizarre encounter with Union troops. Fearing his men were firing upon their comrades, Polk rode across the battlefield to admonish the friendly fire. He suddenly realised he was in the Union lines, and arguing face to face with a Northern general. Bluffing it out he reprimanded his enemy, ordered the officer to cease fire and rode back along the Union line to his own side, whence he gave the order to fire. The Union’s regiment, shocked, was all but decimated.
So who won Perryville? It is hard to say. The South won a tactical victory, getting the better of a larger Union force, but the North won a sound strategic victory, later forcing Bragg’s army back into Tennessee, perhaps more due to lack of supplies and water than military tenacity or guile.
The fighting is also known as the Battle for Kentucky, for the south’s dream of annexing a northern state, and perhaps ultimate victory, died as much at Perryville as it did at the much bigger Battle of Antietam. As historian James McPherson put it, Perryville was part of the “great turning point of 1862”.
LINKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Perryville
http://www.perryvillebattlefield.org/
http://www.perryvillebattlefield.org/html/coming_events.html
