, mostly from Ohio
and Indiana, commenced, October 2d, a general movement against both
Bragg and Smith. General Joshua W. Sill's division of General
Alexander McD. McCook's corps, followed by General Ebenezer Dumont
with a raw division, moved through Shelbyville towards Frankfort.
McCook, with the two remaining divisions of the First Corps,
commanded, respectively, by Generals L. H. Rousseau and James S.
Jackson, moved from Bloomfield to Taylorsville, where he halted
the second night. Crittenden's corps marched _via_ Bardstown on
the Lebanon and Danville road, which passed about four miles to
the south of Perryville, with a branch to it. Gilbert's corps
moved on the more direct road to Perryville. Thomas, second in
command, accompanied Crittenden on the right, and Buell kept his
headquarters with Gilbert's corps, the centre one in the movements.
As the Union columns advanced, the armies of Bragg and Kirby Smith
found it necessary to commence concentrating. For some reason,
not warranted by good strategy, two points of concentration were
designated by Bragg, Perryville and Salvisa, twenty miles apart.
Smith persisted in the belief he would be the first to be struck
by the advancing army.

General Sill, on the road to Frankfort, encountered some opposition
on the 3d, but on the 4th pressed the enemy back so close that the
booming of his cannon interrupted Richard Hawes in the reading of
his inaugural address. Bragg, while witnessing the ceremony,
received dispatches announcing the near approach of the Union
columns.(29) This led to a general stampede of the assembly, most
of which was Confederate military, and the inaugural was never
finished. Hawes fled from the capital, half inaugurated, accompanying
the army, and this was about the last heard of a secession Governor
of Kentucky.

Bragg personally hurried to Harrodsburg and there met Polk, who
gave him news of the movements of his army and of the approach of
the Union columns. Bragg reached the conclusion that the wide
front covered by the Union forces (about fifteen miles) afforded
an opportunity to beat a part of them in an early engagement, and
he therefore, at 5.40 P.M. of the 7th, ordered Polk to recall
Cheatham's division, hitherto ordered to reinforce Smith, and to
form a junction with Hardee's corps near Perryville, and there give
battle immediately, and then move to Versailles, whither Smith was
ordered with his army.(30) McCook was turned directl