ians," he said, "I offer you an opportunity to free yourselves from the tyranny of a despotic ruler."1 Eleven days sufficed to dispel the illusion that he would be regarded as a liberator. September 25 he wrote from Bardstown to Richmond: "I regret to say we are sadly disappointed at the want of action by our friends in Kentucky. We have so far received no accession to this army. General Smith has secured about a brigade, - not half our losses by casualties of different kinds. We have 15,000 stand of arms 2 and no one to use them. Unless a change occurs soon, we must abandon the garden spot of Kentucky to its cupidity. The love of ease and fear of pecuniary loss are the fruitful sources of this evil." 3

September 25 Buell arrived in Louisville, insuring the safety of the city. So dissatisfied had been the administration with his slowness, to which they attributed largely the invasion of Kentucky and the threatened danger to Cincinnati and Louisville, so anxious had they been lest their nursing policy of this border slave State should be set at naught through military incompetence, that they determined on his removal from the head of the army. September 24 orders displacing him and giving the command to George H. Thomas were made out and sent to the army in charge of an aide-decamp. Three days later, when the safety of Louisville was assured, the administration repented of the step, and Halleck telegraphed the aide not to deliver these orders; but this despatch and a subsequent one failed to reach him before the orders had been handed respectively to Buell and to Thomas. The circumstance is notable inasmuch as it gave

1 Sept. 14, O. R., vol. xvi. part ii. p. 822.

2 In his report of Oct. 12, he said: "With ample means to arm 20,000 men... we have not yet issued half the arms left us by casualties incident to the campaign."— Ibid., part i. p. 1088.

Ibid., part ii. p. 876. When Kirby Smith was in the mountains of Kentucky, he wrote that the people were universally hostile, but he had better expectations from the blue-grass region (pp. 776, 780). As he advanced northward, many of the inhabitants fled before him. Sept. 18 he wrote from Lexington: The hearts of the Kentuckians “are evidently with us, but their -grass and fat-grass are against us" (p. 846).

CH. XIX.]

BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE

179

Thomas an opportunity to show his loyalty to his chief by asking respectfully that he be retained in command, and as it brought forth a vigorous protest from prominent Union citizens of Kentucky, asserting that "General Buell has in a very high degree the confidence of this State and of the army."1 Halleck had already suspended the order of removal.2

Buell had gone to work reorganizing his force, intermixing with his veterans the raw soldiers who had assembled for the defence of Louisville. October 1 he left the city with about 58,000 men in pursuit of the enemy, whose available forces were not far from the same number. Bragg himself had proceeded to Lexington to confer with Kirby Smith. Issuing orders for the movement of their troops, the two generals went to Frankfort, the capital, to assist in the farce of inaugurating the Confederate provisional governor of Kentucky. Buell meanwhile hunted for their army. The roads in this part of the State were good, but there had been a drought for several weeks and the Union soldiers suffered from the dust, the prevailing heat, and the lack of water. The battle of Perryville (October 8) was in the beginning a fight on their part for the possession of some pools of water, which resulted in a hot engagement. Both generals claimed the day. Misfortune attended Buell or he might have obtained a signal victory. He. did not receive word that his left wing was sustaining a severe attack until four o'clock in the afternoon, when the battle had been on several hours, and, although his headquarters were but two and a half miles distant, the sound of the musketry firing was broken by the uneven configuration of the ground and by the heavy wind, and did not reach him. He had not expected a general en

1 Signed by J. J. Crittenden, Garrett Davis, R. Mallory, G. W. Dunlap. Davis was United States senator; the other three were representatives from Kentucky. "The balance of advantage was on October 1 decidedly with the Federals." —- Ropes's Civil War, part ii. p. 405.

2 The correspondence will be found in O. R., vol. xvi. part ii. p. 538 et seq.

See Ropes's Civil War, part ii. p. 409.

gagement until the next morning, and, when the news of the fighting was finally brought to him, there was not left sufficient daylight for him to make the dispositions that might have prevented the action from being a disappointment to him and to the people of the North. The next day Bragg fell back, and soon afterwards took up his march southward. Buell's pursuit was not vigorous. He failed to overtake the Confederates and bring them to battle, but he drove them out of Kentucky.1

"I congratulate you and all concerned in your recent battles and victories," telegraphed Lincoln, October 8, to Grant, referring to the repulse of the Confederates' attack on Corinth (October 3, 4) in the Department of Tennessee, which was under the command of Grant. This was a diversion in favor of Bragg to prevent reinforcements from being sent to Buell. The fighting had been directed by W. S. Rosecrans, for neither duty nor any exigency had called Grant to Corinth. As Grant had not emerged from the cloud which had obscured him since Shiloh, this victory brought Rosecrans before the government and the public as the possible great general looked for.5

"The rapid march of your army from Louisville, and your victory at Perryville," telegraphed Halleck to Buell, "has

1 My authorities for this account are the reports of Buell, Bragg, McCook, Rousseau, and Sheridan, the findings of the Buell commission and accompanying documents, O. R., vol. xvi. part i.; the Correspondence in part ii.; Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi.; W. M. Polk, Life of Leonidas Polk, vol. ii.; Fry, The Army under Buell; J. D. Cox's review of the same, The Nation, Oct. 2, 1884; Cist, The Army of the Cumberland; Van Horne, The Army of the Cumberland; articles of Wheeler, Buell, and Gilbert, Century War Book, vol. iii.; Shaler, Kentucky; Moore, Reb. Rec., vol. v.; Pollard, Second Year of the War; Davis, Confederate Government.

2 Corinth was in Mississippi. See vol. iii. p. 628.

3 Grant had already sent Buell two divisions, which reached him Sept. 1-12.-O. R., vol. xvi. part i. p. 37.

4 See vol. iii. p. 627.

5 O. R., vol. xvii. part i. p. 154 et seq.; Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. i. chap. xxix.; Grant to E. B. Washburne, Nov. 7, Grant letters edited by Wilson, p. 22.

CH. XIX.]

LINCOLN AND EAST TENNESSEE

181

In the same

given great satisfaction to the government."1 despatch he was urged to drive the enemy from East Tennessee. The next day the injunction, which was evidently put in Lincoln's own words, was more emphatic: "The capture of East Tennessee should be the main object of your campaign. You say it is the heart of the enemy's resources; make it the heart of yours. Your army can live there if the enemy's can. You must in a great measure live upon the country, paying for your supplies where proper, and levying contributions where necessary. I am directed by the President to say to you that your army must enter East Tennessee this fall, and that it ought to move there while the roads are passable. Once between the enemy and Nashville there will be no serious difficulty in reopening your communications with that place. He does not understand why we cannot march as the enemy marches, live as he lives, and fight as he fights, unless we admit the inferiority of our troops and of our generals." 2

66

The plan of living upon the country, although a favorite notion of the President, the Secretary of War, and the people of the North, was visionary. Lee could not do it in the rich. country of Maryland, which before his invasion had been traversed by neither army. Bragg could not live in the bluegrass region of Kentucky when he had to concentrate his troops to confront Buell. Why not... pursue the enemy into Mississippi, supporting your army on the country?" asked Halleck of Grant after the battle of Corinth. Grant, who never invented obstacles, promptly replied, "An army cannot subsist itself on the country except in forage; "3 and for good military reasons no system was desirable which should promote pillage in the smallest degree.1

1 Oct. 18, O. R., vol. xvi. part ii. p. 623.

2 Oct. 19, ibid., p. 626. The internal evidence that the language is Lincoln's is confirmed by the inclusion of this despatch, although signed by Halleck, in the Complete Works of Lincoln edited by Nicolay and Hay.

3 Oct. 8, O. R., vol. xvii. part i. p. 156.

On the pillage of Napoleon in his Italian campaign and its effect, see Lanfrey, tome i. pp. 83-85, 95, 96.

Buell was asked to live upon a country which had been supporting Confederate armies most of the summer and early autumn, in the face of a hostile force equal to his own. The thing was impossible, but the President had made up his mind that it ought to be tried. Therefore the common-sense, intelligent, and logical answer of Buell1 to his despatch must have been unsatisfactory if not irritating, and was probably interpreted as an excuse for slowness, a subterfuge to avoid incurring a fair military risk. Yet this would not of itself have caused the removal of the general, for the despatches make it clear that his fate hung for some hours in the balance. The additional influence necessary to turn the scale was furnished by Oliver P. Morton, governor of Indiana.

Morton was the ablest and most energetic of the war governors of the Western States. Since the national administration had been from the first dependent on the State machinery for furnishing troops and to some extent for their equipment, the governors of the Northern States were larger factors in the conduct of the war than is easily made to appear in a history where the aim is to secure unity in the narration of crowded events. Owing to the location of his State and the bitterness of the Democratic opposition, no governor had so many obstacles to surmount, and no one threw himself into the contest with more vigor and pertinacity. Wishing to see displayed in military affairs the same force which he put into the administration of his State, he made no secret of his contempt for the generalship of Buell, whom he even charged in his communications with Washington with being “a rebel sympathizer." Morton was personally incorrupt, but selected his coadjutors from the vulgar and the shifty, making his test of fitness for civil and military office personal devotion and unscrupulous obedience to himself rather than honesty and high character. He and Buell became enemies, and he held

1 Oct. 22, O. R., vol. xvi. part ii. p. 636; see Ropes's Civil War, part ii. P. 413.