The Battle of Perryville was a major battle of the American Civil War which was fought on 8 October 1862. The Union victory at Perryville confirmed Union control over the critical border state of Kentucky for the rest of the war.
Following the Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard's retreat from Corinth, Mississippi, President Jefferson Davis replaced him with Braxton Bragg and had Bragg reorganize his army at Tupelo as the Union advance into Mississippi slowed due to General Henry Halleck's reassignment of Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell's slow advance on Chattanooga. General Edmund Kirby Smith proposed a Confederate invasion of Kentucky to obtain supplies, enlist recruits, divert the Union Army from Tennessee, and claim the border state for the Confederacy. John Hunt Morgan's successful July 1862 raid into Kentucky, on which he was joined by 300 Kentucky volunteers, convinced the Confederate leadership that Kentucky could be a great source of manpower if retaken. Rather than retake Corinth or face off against Buell in Middle Tennessee, Bragg decided to reinforce Smith in a bid to retake Kentucky. In August, Bragg launched an offensive into Kentucky, capturing 4,000 Union soldiers at Munfordville and moving his army to Bardstown.
On 8 October 1862, the wing of Bragg's army under Leonidas Polk met a single corps of Buell's Army of the Ohio at Perryville. After a cavalry skirmish, infantry action ensued, and both sides battled for control of the fresh water at Perryville. A Confederate flank attack on Alexander McDowell McCook's I Corps caused the Union left flank to fall back, and the Union line made a stubborn defense as more Confederate divisions joined the attack. The Union line was ultimately forced to fall back after a failed counterattack, and both armies were soon reinforced after their commanders received word of the battle. Later that afternoon, the Union army halted the Confederate advance, and the Union division on the Springfield Pike held off three Confederate regiments. The Union forces pursued the Confederates into Perryville, and skirmishing continued until sunset. Bragg, short of men and supplies, withdrew under the cover of dark, retreating through the Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee. The Confederacy claimed a tactical victory against the numerically superior Union army, but the Union claimed a strategic victory, as the Confederates were permanently expelled from Kentucky. Buell's failure to pursue and destroy Bragg's army cost him his command that autumn, and he was replaced by William Rosecrans.
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