Today, the 8th October, in 1862 a strange battle was fought at Perryville in Kentucky.
It was strange because three Confederate Divisions attacked 8 Union ones and actually won the contest. The three valiant and hard hitting Divisions of Ben Cheatham, Patton Anderson and Simon Bolivar Buckner(who had surrendered Fort Donelsen to Grant in Feb, giving the North its first victory) smashed into one of the Northern army’s three Corps, routing it.
The other two Corps were not engaged as the Army’s commander, an Ohian and former West Pointer, did not know a battle was going on! Acoustic shadow meant his army’s other 35000 men stood idly while a third, the Left, was wrecked.
The next day, the Southern army’s commander, Braxton Bragg, who had realised he was now facing insurmountable odds, withdrew.
The South’s golden opportunity to wreak havoc in the state, possibly even pushing the Northern host from it, was lost as Bragg and another Southern "army’ commander, Edmund Kirby Smith, refused to cooperate their military actions.
In Summer the Southern administration had hoped to bring its sister Slave State back to the fold.