Battle of Perryville - Aftermath

Aftermath

I was in every battle, skirmish and march that was made by the First Tennessee Regiment during the war, and I do not remember of a harder contest and more evenly fought battle than that of Perryville. If it had been two men wrestling, it would have been called a "dog fall." Both sides claim victory—both whipped.

Private Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee

Union casualties totaled 4,276 (894 killed, 2,911 wounded, 471 captured or missing). Confederate casualties were 3,401 (532 killed, 2,641 wounded, 228 captured or missing). In all, casualties totaled one-fifth of those involved.

Braxton Bragg had arguably won a tactical victory, having fought aggressively and pushed his opponent back for over a mile. But his precarious strategic situation became clear to him as he found out about the III Corps advance on the Springfield Pike, and when he learned late in the day of the II Corps' presence on the Lebanon Pike. At 9 p.m. he met with his subordinates at the Crawford House and gave orders to begin a withdrawal after midnight, leaving a picket line in place while his army joined up with Kirby Smith's. As the army marched toward Harrodsburg, they were forced to leave 900 wounded men behind.

The two other corps of Buell's army were each as large as the entire Confederate force engaged. Had they both advanced boldly once the battle was underway, they could have seized the town of Perryville, cut off the attackers from their supply depots in central Kentucky, and very possibly achieved a decisive battlefield victory on the model of Austerlitz or Waterloo.

Gerald J. Prokopowicz, All for the Regiment

Bragg united his forces with Smith's at Harrodsburg, and the Union and Confederate armies, now of comparable size, skirmished with one another over the next week or so, but neither attacked. Bragg soon realized that the new infantry recruits he had sought from Kentucky would not be forthcoming, though many were willing to join the cavalry, and that he lacked the logistical support he needed to remain in the state. He made his way southeast to Knoxville, Tennessee, through the Cumberland Gap. Bragg was quickly called to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, to explain to Jefferson Davis the charges brought by his officers about how he had conducted his campaign, who were demanding that he be replaced as head of the army. Although Davis decided to leave the general in command, Bragg's relationship with his subordinates would be severely damaged. Upon rejoining the army, he ordered a movement to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Buell conducted a half-hearted pursuit of Bragg and returned to Nashville, rather than pushing on to East Tennessee as the Lincoln administration had wished. Pent-up dissatisfaction with Buell's performance resulted in a reorganization of the Western departments. On October 24, a new Department of the Cumberland was formed under Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, and Buell's Army of the Ohio was assigned to it, redesignated the XIV Corps. (After the Battle of Stones River at Murfreesboro in late December, another strategic defeat for Braxton Bragg, it would receive its more familiar name, the Army of the Cumberland.) Buell was ordered to appear before a commission investigating his conduct during the campaign. He remained in military limbo for a year and a half, his career essentially ruined. He resigned from the service in May 1864.

Following the Battle of Perryville, the Union maintained control of Kentucky for the rest of the war. Historian James M. McPherson considers Perryville to be part of a great turning point of the war, "when battles at Antietam and Perryville threw back Confederate invasions, forestalled European mediation and recognition of the Confederacy, perhaps prevented a Democratic victory in the northern elections of 1862 that might have inhibited the government's ability to carry on the war, and set the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation which enlarged the scope and purpose of the conflict."

Portions of the battlefield of Perryville are preserved by the state of Kentucky as Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site.