Brig. Gen.
William Tecumseh Sherman, still unsettled by the debacle at
Bull Run little more than two months ago, is becoming even more unsettled in
Kentucky. Ostensibly neutral,
Kentucky’s citizens are a mix of Confederate sympathizers and Union loyalists, and it is important to hold this state for the
Union—or the
Ohio River will become the border between the
Union and the Confederacy.
Sherman sees danger everywhere. Today, he writes his father-in-law a litany of complaints and anxieties: most of his soldiers are undisciplined volunteers, whose abilities Sherman does not trust; apathy or disloyalty is rampant among Kentucky’s citizenry; he lacks supplies, and Confederate Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner has a large force nearby (but not as large as Sherman imagines). “I suppose I must meet the shock [of an attack] with what I have,” he concludes gloomily. Sherman will not be attacked....but, in weeks to come, he will suffer a defeat of another kind.
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