page_title: Battle of Perryville
section_title: Attack from the Confederate right
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Perryville / Battle / Attack from the Confederate right
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the en:Battle of Perryville of the American Civil War, drawn in Adobe Illustrator CC by Hal Jespersen. Graphic source file is available at http:/www.cwmaps.com/
context_page_description: The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was fought on October 8, 1862, in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, as the culmination of the Confederate Heartland Offensive during the American Civil War. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Mississippi initially won a tactical victory against primarily a single corps of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Union Army of the Ohio. The battle is considered a strategic Union victory, sometimes called the Battle for Kentucky, since Bragg withdrew to Tennessee soon thereafter. The Union retained control of the critical border state of Kentucky for the remainder of the war.
  On October 7, Buell's army, in pursuit of Bragg, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville in three columns. Union forces first skirmished with Confederate cavalry on the Springfield Pike before the fighting became more general, on Peters Hill, when the Confederate infantry arrived. Both sides were desperate to get access to fresh water. The next day, at dawn, fighting began again around Peters Hill as a Union division advanced up the pike, halting just before the Confederate line.
context_section_description: Cheatham's artillery bombardment began at 12:30 p.m., but he did not immediately order his infantry forward. Union troops continued to file into line, extending their flank to the north, beyond the intended avenue of attack. Bragg moved Cheatham's division into Walker's Bend, assuming the redirected attack would now strike the Union's open flank. Unfortunately for the Confederates, their cavalry reconnaissance withdrew before McCook placed an artillery battery under Lt. Charles Parsons and the brigade of Brig. Gen. William R. Terrill onto the Open Knob, a prominent hill on the northern end of the battlefield.
  The brigade of Brig. Gen. Daniel S. Donelson was the first to cross the Chaplin River, climb the bluffs on the west bank, and began its attack around 2 p.m. Two of the brigade's regiments had been detached, leaving only three for the attack. Cheatham shouted, "Give 'em hell, boys!" One of the enduring legends of the Civil War is that Gen. Polk, who was also an Episcopal bishop, was nearby and seconded the cheer: "Give it to 'em boys; give 'em what General Cheatham says!" The brigade found that instead of striking the open flank it had expected, it was performing a frontal assault on the center of the Union position. The 16th Tennessee Infantry, under Col. John H. Savage, raced ahead of the other two regiments, attempting to reach the artillery battery of Capt. Samuel J. Harris. (Savage held Donelson in disdain, considering him a drunkard with limited military ability, and often paid little attention to orders from his commander. He considered Donelson's order to attack Harris's battery to be a death sentence against him.) As it moved west into a depression, it came under crossfire from the 33rd Ohio Infantry and the eight guns of Parsons' artillery on Open Knob, 200 yards (180 m) to the north. Cheatham ordered the brigade of Brig. Gen. George E. Maney forward to deal with Parsons on the Open Knob, but Donelson's brigade could not withstand the fire and withdrew to its starting point at 2:30 p.m. with about 20% casualties; Savage's regiment lost 219 of its 370 men.
  Parsons' eight guns on the Open Knob were manned by inexperienced soldiers, some of whom were infantry recruits from the 105th Ohio Infantry. Terrill's 33rd Brigade was posted to defend the guns. Meanwhile, Confederate Brigadier General George Maney's brigade was able to approach the Knob undetected through the woods, as the Union troops' attention was focused on Donelson's attack. Eventually, the Union artillery redirected their guns and a fierce firefight ensued. Brig. Gen. Jackson, the 10th Division commander, was killed in the action, and command fell to Terrill, who immediately made a poor command decision. Obsessed with the safety of his artillery, he ordered the 123rd Illinois to mount a bayonet charge down the hill. The 770 raw Union troops suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the 1,800 veteran Confederates. As reinforcements arrived from the 80th Illinois and a detachment of infantry commanded by Col. Theophilus T. Garrard, the two sides were briefly stalemated. Maney's artillery, commanded by Lt. William Turner, pounded the inexperienced defenders, and Maney ordered a charge up the steep slope, which swept the Union men from the hill and captured most of Parsons' guns; the tenacious Parsons had to be dragged away from the scene by his retreating soldiers.
  Maney's attack continued to the west, down the reverse slope of the Open Knob, through a cornfield, and across the Benton Road, after which was another steep ridge, occupied by the 2,200 men in the Union 28th Brigade of Col. John C. Starkweather (Rousseau's division), and twelve guns. Those guns made the Open Knob an untenable position. Starkweather had placed his 21st Wisconsin in the cornfield about the time that Maney was attacking Parsons' position. The inexperienced men of the 21st—some of whom had never fired their weapons before, the regiment having been formed less than a month earlier—could see little through the 10- to 12-foot (3.7 m) high cornstalks of the cornfield. They were su
caption: Attacks by Donelson, Maney, Stewart, and Jones (c. 3 p.m.)[41]
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