;
but something always diverted General Bragg at the supreme moment,
and he failed to utilize the chances falling to him at this time,
for, deflecting his march to the north toward Bardstown, he left open
to Buell the direct road to Louisville by way of Elizabethtown.

At Bardstown Bragg's army was halted while he endeavored to establish
a Confederate government in Kentucky by arranging for the
installation of a provisional governor at Lexington. Bragg had been
assured that the presence of a Confederate army in Kentucky would so
encourage the secession element that the whole State could be forced
into the rebellion and his army thereby largely increased; but he had
been considerably misled, for he now found that though much latent
sympathy existed for his cause, yet as far as giving active aid was
concerned, the enthusiasm exhibited by the secessionists of Kentucky
in the first year of the war was now replaced by apathy, or at best
by lukewarmness. So the time thus spent in political machinations
was wholly lost to Bragg; and so little reinforcement was added to
his army that it may be said that the recruits gained were not enough
to supply the deficiencies resulting from the recent toilsome marches
of the campaign.

In the meanwhile Buell had arrived at Louisville, system had been
substituted for the chaos which had previously obtained there, and
orders were issued for an advance upon the enemy with the purpose of
attacking and the hope of destroying him within the limits of the
"blue grass" region, and, failing in that, to drive him from
Kentucky. The army moved October 1, 1862, and my division, now a
part of the Third Corps, commanded by General C. C. Gilbert, marched
directly on Bardstown, where it was thought the enemy would make a
stand, but Bragg's troops retreated toward Perryville, only resisting
sufficiently to enable the forces of General Kirby Smith to be drawn
in closer--they having begun a concentration at Frankfort--so they
could be used in a combined attack on Louisville as soon as the
Confederate commander's political projects were perfected.

Much time was consumed by Buell's army in its march on Perryville,
but we finally neared it on the evening of October 7. During the
day, Brigadier-General Robert B. Mitchell's division of Gilbert's
corps was in the advance on the Springfield pike, but as the enemy
developed that he was in strong force on the opposite side of a small
stream called Doctor's