Chapter 6- The Kentucky Resurgence [December-January]
The defeats handed to the army of Tennessee stunned and appalled the confederacy- losses exceeding that which the union had endured in every previous foreign venture dating back to the revolution in one battle whipped the south into a frenzy, and the response was still more men, fresh into the field from the farms and small towns of the Mississippi river valley. 5 Cavalry and 3 Infantry divisions were committed to the field.
This green mobile corps, later to see fame under most esteemed of the wild geese, was to be absent the coming horrors of the chill months. In its haste to liberate anguished Louisville, the north had desperately forded the river along the mason-Dixon line, with a force sufficient enough to drive back Stuart, but not sufficient enough to hold the line against future aggression. Buell, for all his brag and fuss, knew this. He thunderously requisitioned more men, but the home front failed him. No politician wants to announce the need for new men, and of course the sons of Kentucky would take arms to see their land not torn from the union! In concluding so, both sides made a terrible judgment of Kentucky's will- Kentucky as a whole approached official apathy to staying or going. Torn apart by northern and southern loyalists, the vast majority of impoverished subsidence farmers and coal miners waited for the death of war to cease. And so Buell was to get no new men.
Johnston was able, then, invading from Paducah, to smash Louisville's 2 divisions under direct command of Buell in detail, with his 5 division main-corps. Beaureguard's matching 5 divisions smashed a mere 1 division in Paducah, and, with Beaureguard shipping men to take up the slack to defend Louisville, 4 of Johnston's divisions smashed Lexington. Bowling Green, horribly isolated, saw its two divisions starting the long, glum march, to Andersonville. Kentucky was suddenly in confederate hands, in its entirety.
But it was not content as such. On Christmas Eve, with the guns of a corpse-strewn field, the people of Louisville rose up with a vengeance, attacking sleeping confederates in their beds. Hundreds of CS soldiers died before they could rally, but when they inevitably did, the reaction was fierce. Guns were fired indiscriminately into the crowd- women and children were butchered, men and boys suspected of being kin to a partisan were shot.
Johnston ordered the hanging of captured citizens to curtail the uprising; it failed miserably. With the industry along the Ohio burned the people of Louisville lay penniless, outraged at the indignities they had suffered before, and emboldened by the union liberation just prior. The first modern house to house fighting in history took place here, with a determined enemy making the south pay a terrible toll in blood for a ruined city.
The Louisville riot would shatter the Confederate foreign relations and bring many previous sympathizers to hate the cause.
The effects on southern doctrine of occupied cities were to be profound. Journalists in New York, London and Paris screamed the same thing- Slaughter and Struggle. The south was seen as a barbaric aggressor, something that would poison their relations for the duration of the CSA's existence.
The north, for their part, wisely stayed out of the city for the duration of the conflict, which was "defeated" after a week of bloody fighting, but would simmer off and on indefinitely.
The CSA in Kentucky had prevailed against union arms, poor logistics, and even the local populace. But it had to come to terms with the fact that some things aren't worth the cost, and that for the simple people of Kentucky, it had become the tyrant-knave for which it expressed such venomous rancor.