A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER XXXI, BLOODY DOINGS IN THE WEST
IT is necessary to go back a little to give some account of the way the war was progressing in the West.
On the very day when Lee won the great victory at the second battle of Manassas, there was a battle going on at Richmond, in the State of Kentucky. The abolition government at Washington had never relaxed any of its energy in that section. Indeed its military movements in that section were quite equal to those in Virginia in magnitude. The stupendous project had already been formed of driving out the Confederate forces from Kentucky, Tennessee, and all the States west of the Mississippi, and then of cutting down through the Gulf States into the very heart of the South. Grant was "pegging away," as Mr.Lincoln would say, in Mississippi, McClernand and Buell in Kentucky and Tennessee, while there was another Federal army operating in Missouri and Arkansas.
It was necessary for the Confederate Government to do something to distract the plans which were gradually ripening for the subjugation of these more Southern States. The scheme hit upon was to make some bold raids through Kentucky, and threaten Cincinnati and the State of Ohio, for the purpose of dividing the strength of the Federals,which was setting so strongly South.
Early in the month of August, the Confederate commander in Kentucky and Tennessee, General Kirby Smith, ordered a strong force to move northward, for the purpose of carrying out the scheme above stated. On the 29th of August it reached the little town of Richmond, where lay a considerable Federal force under General Nelson. A severe battle followed, in which the abolition army in that region was quite as badly whipped as it was at Manassas in Virginia the same day.
This defeat of Nelson at Richmond left General Smith a clear track through Kentucky to Lexington, at which city he arrived on the 4th day of September. As his army passed through Lexington it received the wildest display of welcome, especially from the ladies. The rule of the abolition commanders in that region had been brutal in the extreme, and Smith's presence was therefore hailed as a sign of protection and safety from further outrage. When General John Morgan's cavalry, which was in Smith's command, reached the city, it is said that the demonstrations of welcome were perfectly deafening. In that place this gallant officer was again in the presence of his own neighbors and friends.
When it became known in Cincinnati that General Smith had won the battle of Richmond and penetrated as far towards the Ohio line as Lexington, the people of that city were wild with fear. The whole city instantly became a camp. People going from their houses to their places of business, or from their places of business home to their meals, were seized by the abolition officers and pressed into the army.
At the same time that General Smith entered the State of Kentucky from the line of Richmond, General Bragg came into the State with another Confederate army in a more easterly direction, from Knoxville and Chattanooga. But General Smith's orders in marching so near to the Ohio line were to menace, not to attack. After making this demonstration he was to fall back to co-operate with Bragg's army.
This cunning demonstration of the Confederates in Kentucky had the desired effect. It caused the Federals to evacuate East Tennessee and Northern Alabama.
On the 17th of September, General Bragg fell upon a force of abolitionists at Mumfordville, and captured about five thousand prisoners, with a loss of less than a hundred of his own men. On the 8th of October he had a severe battle with nearly the whole Federal army in Kentucky, at Perryville, which was not a decided victory to either side, though Bragg claimed a victory. He captured fifteen pieces of artillery and took a large number of prisoners. But his mistake was in risking the battle at all with only part of his own army, for the commands of neither General Smith nor that of General Withers were with him at the time.
Ascertaining that the Federals had been reinforced during the night, General Bragg withdrew early the next morning to Harrodsburg, where he met Generals Smith and Withers.
While Bragg was thus backing and filling, and losing his opportunity, General Buell's army was swelling to dimensions so far beyond that of the Confederates that it became evident that he must beat a retreat.
This he commenced on the 12th of October, carrying with him an immense amount of stores and munitions of war. It was painful to witness the dismay of the Democrats and better sort of people of the region round about Lexington, when they saw that they should no longer enjoy the protection of the Confederate army. Women and children were everywhere seen crying and wringing their hands. They declared that they preferred to die rather than again be subjected to the brutality and cruelty of the abolitionists.
Thus ended that Confederate campaign in Kentucky. Though it had done some gallant fighting and won no mean victories, yet it was nearly fruitless of the great advantages it might have won had General Bragg pushed his opportunity as Stonewall Jackson, and other Confederate commanders, would, no doubt, have done.
The people of Kentucky were in a strangely divided and unhappy condition during the whole war. Men like George D. Prentice, the editor of the Louisville Journal, a prominent paper in that State, took strong sides with the abolitionists. While professing to hate abolitionism, they threw all their influence in its favor, and gave the strongest support to a man who had no other object but the abolition of "slavery," and the subversion of the democratic form of government established by the great men of the Revolution.
While the events above described were taking place in Kentucky, active scenes were transpiring further South. General Rosecrans, a Federal commander of what was called the Army of the Mississippi and Tennessee, was entrenched, with forty-five thousand men, at Corinth. The Confederate commands of Generals Van Dorn and Price united and marched to Corinth, for the purpose of engaging Rosecrans. It was a desperate and foolhardy undertaking,to attack an entrenched army so greatly superior in numbers. The Confederate forces were under the command of General Van Dorn. The battle was opened on Friday morning, October 3d, 1862. Under General Van Dorn were Generals Price, Lovell, Maury, and Herbert. Van Dorn's assault was made with tremendous power, The Federals were pushed slowly back for nearly two hours under the admirably handled batteries of General Lovell's corps.
But Rosecrans had been driven into his fortifications. Still the Confederates drove him beyond his first line of fortifications, back within his second. This was the condition of the two armies when night put a stop to the fearful carnage. Van Dorn was elated, and telegraphed to Richmond that he had gained a great victory. But he knew not yet the strength of Rosecrans' works.
The next morning before daylight (General Van Dorn still commanding), General Price commenced firing with his artillery, at a distance of only four hundred yards in front of the enemy's entrenchments. Soon Lovell, Price, Maury, and Herbert were all hotly at work. The Confederates fought with the same desperation they had displayed the previous day, but it was a useless struggle. After performing prodigies of valor, and after a horrible slaughter of some of the bravest men that ever entered a battle-field, Van Dorn ordered his troops to fall back. But this order was not given until three o'clock in the afternoon. From daylight to this hour he had kept his little army in one of the fiercest and most unequal combats ever witnessed. But when he gave up and fell back, Rosecrans made no attempt to follow him, which showed that he, too, had had enough of fighting for the time.
While these bloody scenes were being enacted in Tennessee, the northwestern portion of the State of Missouri was the theatre of the most horrible guerrilla warfare. Under the despotic rule of the Lincoln General Schofield and the murderous cruelties of an infamous scoundrel by the name of Colonel McNeil, the people of that section had been goaded into uncontrollable madness.
One act, of the many atrocities of McNeil, will forever stamp his name as one of the most hardened wretches that ever lived. A so-called Union man by the name of Andrew Allsman was missing. McNeil issued an order that unless Allsman was found in ten days he would shoot ten Confederate prisoners. The ten days elapsed and Allsman was not found. In vain the citizens and the Confederates protested that they had not harmed him, and knew nothing of his whereabouts. But McNeil was determined to have a feast of innocent blood. So he took ten innocent citizens of Missouri to slake his cannibal appetite. In vain did their wives and friends plead! The ten men were inhumanly slaughtered as a revenge for the absence of the one man Allsman. Afterwards the man Allsman turned up alive and well!
He had been absent of his own will and motion. But the ten innocent men were in their graves, as an everlasting monument of the infamous cruelty and butchery of abolition rule in Missouri.
This wretch McNeil, it is said, is still living and is now one of the leading spirits of the Abolition party in the State of Missouri. He is a fit instrument of the abominable despotism of the abolitionists of that State, where clergymen, who refuse to take a certain illegal and ridiculous oath, are ruthlessly dragged out of their pulpits, and incarcerated in dungeons, or forbidden, under the most outrageous penalties, to preach the Gospel of Christ.
When these scenes are rehearsed, in future times, they will be regarded as the darkest and bloodiest events that disgrace the history of mankind. They have already caused the name of the United States to be repeated with a chill of horror throughout the civilized world.
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