- 11 Aug 2020 13:38
#15112758
August 12, Tuesday
Confederate General Kirby Smith sends his cavalry from Knoxville, Tennessee, on a wide sweep ahead of the route of his planned invasion of Kentucky.
By stationing troops at vital points along his supply lines, Union General Buell has been able to repel raiders south of the Cumberland. But to the north, as Buell will write, “the depredations were prosecuted with increased vigor. Our cavalry was totally insufficient to cope with these incursions, which it must be said, also, were seldom resisted by the infantry guards with vigilance and resolution.” Today, for example, Confederate raiders under John Hunt Morgan sweep into Gallatin, Tennessee, a town on the vital railroad between Nashville and the Federal supply center at Louisville. After the Confederates capture the garrison, burn the depot, and destroy some trestles, they turn their attention to an 800-foot railroad tunnel that has been cut through a mountain north of the town. Morgan’s men set fire to a captured train loaded with hay and push it into the tunnel; the timber supports catch fire and burn until the tunnel collapses.
With the railroad now closed for months and Kirby Smith on the move in Kentucky, Buell begins debating whether he should withdraw toward Nashville or confront the Confederates somewhere else in central Tennessee. In the end, he will decide to concentrate the Army of the Ohio at McMinnville, on the Cumberland Plateau northwest of Chattanooga, where he will be in a position to block any advance by General Bragg.
To the west there is skirmishing between Stockton in Cedar County and Humansville, and at Van Buren, Missouri; a Federal expedition from this day to the fourteenth from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Independence, Missouri; and between this day and the eighteenth from Camp Gamble, Missouri, a Federal expedition goes searching for guerrillas.
USS Arthur captures the Southern vessel Breaker at Aransas Pass, and Elma and Hannah are burned to avoid capture by Federals off Corpus Christi, Texas.
Confederate General Kirby Smith sends his cavalry from Knoxville, Tennessee, on a wide sweep ahead of the route of his planned invasion of Kentucky.
By stationing troops at vital points along his supply lines, Union General Buell has been able to repel raiders south of the Cumberland. But to the north, as Buell will write, “the depredations were prosecuted with increased vigor. Our cavalry was totally insufficient to cope with these incursions, which it must be said, also, were seldom resisted by the infantry guards with vigilance and resolution.” Today, for example, Confederate raiders under John Hunt Morgan sweep into Gallatin, Tennessee, a town on the vital railroad between Nashville and the Federal supply center at Louisville. After the Confederates capture the garrison, burn the depot, and destroy some trestles, they turn their attention to an 800-foot railroad tunnel that has been cut through a mountain north of the town. Morgan’s men set fire to a captured train loaded with hay and push it into the tunnel; the timber supports catch fire and burn until the tunnel collapses.
With the railroad now closed for months and Kirby Smith on the move in Kentucky, Buell begins debating whether he should withdraw toward Nashville or confront the Confederates somewhere else in central Tennessee. In the end, he will decide to concentrate the Army of the Ohio at McMinnville, on the Cumberland Plateau northwest of Chattanooga, where he will be in a position to block any advance by General Bragg.
To the west there is skirmishing between Stockton in Cedar County and Humansville, and at Van Buren, Missouri; a Federal expedition from this day to the fourteenth from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Independence, Missouri; and between this day and the eighteenth from Camp Gamble, Missouri, a Federal expedition goes searching for guerrillas.
USS Arthur captures the Southern vessel Breaker at Aransas Pass, and Elma and Hannah are burned to avoid capture by Federals off Corpus Christi, Texas.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke
—Edmund Burke