Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1997

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

History

Major Professor

Stephen V. Ash

Committee Members

Charles W. Johnson, Vejas Liulevicius

Abstract

This is the story of a battle called Mill Springs by the North and Fishing Creek by the South. It occurred in eastern Kentucky on Sunday, January 19, 1862, in a heavy rain. Confederate forces, poorly led and armed, marched through the night to meet Union forces sent to drive them out of Kentucky. In the four-hour battle the Southerners would not only lose the charismatic General Felix ZollicofiFer but also lose their first major battle of the Civil War. Their organization was so disrupted that they abandoned vast quantities of equipment in their effort to cross the Cumberland River. Once on the other side some units disintegrated and returned to their homes.

The North, however, missed a window of opportunity to invade East Tennessee in the wake of the battle. The region’s Confederate forces had just suffered a devastating defeat and had ceased to be an effective fighting force. In the chaos that followed, the North had a golden opportunity to sever the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad line and cut off the Confederate forces in the Eastern Theater from the vast manufacturing and agricultural resources of Tennessee. An invasion of East Tennessee would have also liberated a sizeable number of Unionists there from Confederate control. This would have fit President Abraham Lincoln’s and General George McClellan’s strategy. Instead, General Don Carlos Buell chose to enter Tennessee to the west by way of the Mississippi and Cumberland Rivers, using General Ulysses Grant’s forces as a spearhead.

The events of the battle foreshadowed other actions that would occur in the Western Theater during the war. These include Confederate problems with command and supply, the future actions of Union General George H. Thomas and the star-crossed actions of the actions of the Army of Tennessee of which many of the Confederate units would soon join. Most importantly, the missed opportunity could have sharply shortened the bloody war.

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