Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode 213 of our

Civil War Podcast. My name is Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast.

As y'all recall at the end of the last show, the first shots of the Battle of Periville had

just been fired. And so on Wednesday, October 8th, 1862 near Periville, Kentucky, the Federal

Soldiers of Don Carlos Buehl's Army of the Ohio would fight with Braxton Bragg's Confederate troops

to decide the fate of the Bluegrass State. The Army of the Ohio had left Louisville on October

1st and Buehl had sent a sizable force consisting of a reinforced division from McCook's first

corps toward the state capital of Frankfurt, while the rest of the Army, about 55,000 men, marched

towards Bardstown. When the Confederates evacuated Bardstown, Buehl pursued them with Gilbert's third

corps taking the direct road to Periville, McCook's corps on the left, and crittened in second

corps to the right. Since the Army of the Ohio would have stretched for an unwieldy 10 miles if

strung out on a single road, Buehl, by having the columns march on separate roads, increased the

Army's speed, and also enlarged the area in which the hot and thirsty Federals could find water

and the drought-stricken Kentucky countryside. The use of multiple columns increased the Army of

the Ohio speed, but the situation, along with poor staff work, also made coordination more difficult

as evidenced by a note that McCook wrote to George Thomas on October 5th in which he confessed

himself, quote, in blissful ignorance concerning the movements of the rest of the Army. Spoiler

alert, but in the upcoming battle, the breakdown in communications would result in two of the three

federal corps playing little or no part in the fighting. On the march from Louisville to Bardstown,

and then during the subsequent pursuit of the withdrawing Confederates that led to the battle of

Periville, thousands of new Union soldiers found it difficult to keep up with the rest of the Army.

The green trutes hadn't yet become accustomed to the hardships and difficulties of marching and

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