Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/695

 Rh the movement against Grant and the battle of Shiloh. In this famous combat Albert Sidney Johnston fell, and Beauregard succeeded to the general command, while Bragg was promoted general and assigned to the command of the army of the Mississippi, with Polk, Hardee and Breckinridge as his corps commanders. When after the evacuation of Corinth the army had retired to Tupelo, Beauregard, on account of illness, turned over the command temporarily to Bragg and went to Mobile. Beauregard was thereupon relieved and Bragg appointed as his successor. He was now in command of the department and all the forces arrayed against the Federal invasion between the Mississippi river and Atlanta, except the command of General Kirby Smith, in East Tennessee. He planned a campaign into Kentucky before Buell was ready to oppose him, hoping by a bold offensive movement to arouse the friends of the Confederate cause in the border States and drive the enemy beyond the Ohio. He transferred his troops to Chattanooga, and set out on his northward movement about the middle of August, Kirby Smith moving with a separate command in co-operation. At Munfordville he captured over 4,000 Federal soldiers, and then moved his army to Bardstown, and with his staff joined Kirby Smith at Lexington, where on October 4th, Hon. Richard Hawes was installed as Confederate provisional governor of Kentucky. At Perry ville he encountered Buell's army and was victorious at every point, striking such a severe blow that he was able subsequently to move without loss to his large trains of captured stores, back to Knoxville. Preparing at once for a movement into Middle Tennessee he reached Murfreesboro November 26, 1862, about the date when General J. E. Johnston was appointed to the general command of the new department of the West, including the forces of Smith, Bragg and Pemberton. On December 30th-31st he repulsed the advance of Rosecrans army upon his position, gaining a notable victory,