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CHAPTER 2 Missed Opportunities Seven in the morning, the officers had said; of course, it didn't work out that way. The Fifteenth Kentucky and the rest of the Seventeenth Brigade were last out of the Bacon Creek camp, and it was noon by the time the buglers finally sounded the march. By that time, the men and wagons stretched ahead for miles, a thin gray line winding off toward the horizon. The men marched south, hugging the line of the Louisville &: Nashville Railroad. The brigade passed through Brig. Gen. Alexander McCook's camp near Munfordville and crossed the Green River at eight that evening. While crossing the river, spirits were lifted when the men noticed that the moon's halo seemed a misty red, white, and blue. A good sign, the men thought: even the heavens had hung out the Stars and Stripes. They camped for the night at Rowlett's Station, where two months earlier a Confederate brigade under Thomas Hindman had come north hoping to break up the railroad, only to be beaten back by a small Federal force. "The relics of the battle are still visible," Dr. Wetherby wrote to the Democrat. "I counted over twenty dead horses on the field, and conversed with several of the Germans engaged in the fight."1 After two days at Rowlett's Station, Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell arrived in camp to meet with the brigade and regimental commanders. Buell, a dour forty-three-year-old Kentuckian, had replaced William T. Sherman as commander of the Department of the Ohio in November. Buell had distinguished himself during the Mexican War and was generally considered a talented strategist. He had begun the war on General McClellan's staff before coming west.2 That night, orders were finally distributed through the camp. The army would march on Bowling Green at dawn. As the word spread, the 24 Missed Opportunities 25 camp grew restless. Some men were excited, some apprehensive, but most believed that they would overtake the Confederates within a day or so. Then would come the battle for Kentucky. At seven the next morning, the army set off again, Mitchel's division in the lead, the Seventeenth Brigade in the center. Unlike the first day of the campaign, this was a good day for marching. The music of a dozen or more bands floated through the air, and the musicians of the Fifteenth Kentucky joined in. Regimental flags snapped in the breeze as the infantry moved through the countryside, the artillery rumbling behind and the cavalry covering the flanks. Mitchel gUided his horse up onto a small hill just off the road as the troops marched past. A regiment of German immigrants moved by, singing as they marched, and Mitchel shouted, "I hear the solid tread of noble soldiers." In the late morning, about six miles from Green River near Horse Cave, the ranks of soldiers passed by one of the few houses they had seen that was not deserted. A pretty, young girl stood in the doorway, waving a Union flag. Cheers ran down the lines, the soldiers waved their hats, and officers saluted the girl as the bands broke into "Dixie."3 The country below Horse Cave was even more desolate than the territory above. Because of the caverns scattered around the countryside, there were no springs or streams. The only source of water was from ponds-"sinks," the locals called them. During the earlier Confederate retreat, Brigadier General Hindman had ordered broken-down horses shot and left in the ponds, together with cattle, dogs, swine, and anything else he could get his hands on, intending to make the water undrinkable for the Federal army. "I had heard much of outrages committed, but I did not believe Americans capable of such low mode of warfare," wrote Doctor Wetherby.4 The Confederates had also taken the time to destroy the railroad below Horse Cave. Ties were piled along the grade and burned, and rails were heated, twisted, and broken. Roads were obstructed with logs and brushwood, and the march was further delayed while pioneer companies , crews of the brawnier men detached from the infantry regiments for just this sort of work, cleared away the blockades. The men marched through the gently rolling valley, with swatches of oak, chestnut, and persimmon scattered across their path and the Green River knobs gazing down at them from a few miles to the west. The brigade camped at sunset in a large field...

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