Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Perryville Battlefield | |
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| (U.S. National Historic Landmark) | |
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| Nearest city: | Perryville, Kentucky |
| Built/Founded: | 1862 |
| Architect: | Unknown |
| Architectural style(s): | No Style Listed |
| Added to NRHP: | October 15, 1966 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 66000356[1] |
| Governing body: | State |
Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site is a seventeen-acre park in Perryville, Kentucky, in Boyle County. It is built on the site where many of the soldiers killed in the American Civil War Battle of Perryville were buried. A museum and several monuments commemorate the battle. The site became part of the park system in 1936.[2]
The battle was fought on October 8, 1862, between the Union Army of the Ohio, commanded by Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, and the Confederate Army of Mississippi, commanded by Gen. Braxton Bragg. The battle was a tactical victory for the Confederates, but a strategic victory for the Union because Bragg withdrew his army from the state of Kentucky, which remained in Union hands for the rest of the war.
Perryville's homes and farms were left in shambles by the battle. Henry P. Bottom, a prominent secessionist on whose farm a significant portion of the battle was fought, suffered losses of pork, corn, hay, and wood to Union soldiers who remained in the area for weeks after the fighting. The main force of the Union army had buried most of their dead in long trenches before pursuing Bragg, but most of the Confederate dead were still unburied a week after the battle. Union soldiers finally forced local residents to help them lay the dead in shallow trenches carved in the dry soil. Two months later, 347 were re-buried in a mass grave on Bottom's land. According to Volume 3 of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War" {.p.23} in 1886 a total of 435 Confederates were buried on Squire Bottom's land-this land was chosen because their dead lay thickest on the eastern slope. Although Bottom claimed that about 100 were identified the only rements of the cemetery was a corner of a stone wall and one headstone-of Samuel H. Ransom of the 1st Tennessee Infantry CSA.
At the end of the war in 1865, Union soldiers reburied the remains of 969 Federal dead in a national cemetery at Perryville with a stone wall, two gates and plans for a monument. The monument was never erected, however, and in 1867 the new cemetery was closed and the Federal dead transferred to Camp Nelson in Jessamine County, Kentucky, leaving no identified Federal dead on the field at Perryville.
On the fortieth anniversary of the battle in 1902, a Confederate monument was dedicated in the Confederate cemetery begun by Henry Bottom at the center of the field, and a smaller Federal memorial was erected nearby in 1931. The Perryville State Battlefield site was established in 1954 by the Kentucky State Conservation Commission, and a museum and visitor's center were opened near the monuments on the battle's one hundredth anniversary in 1962.
For a century following the war, the memory of the Battle of Perryville (and many others fought in the Western Theater) was minimized by what has been called the "Lee tradition," which emphasized the deeds of the armies and generals who fought in the Eastern Theater, particularly Virginia. Around the time of the war's centennial, however, numerous scholars worked to establish the importance of the Western campaigns. In recent years, appreciation for what happened at Perryville and other battlefields in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi has grown.
More than 7,000 acres (28 km²) at Perryville are now recognized as a National Historic Landmark, and the site averages around 100,000 visitors per year. A reenactment of the battle occurs each October. The Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association was created in 1991 to preserve, enlarge and protect the park. The acquisition of 149 acres (0.6 km²) of farmland from a descendant of Henry Bottom more than doubled the size of the park and allowed visitors to complete a tour of the entire battlefield.
[edit] References
- ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
- ^ (1992) "Historic Sites", in Kleber, John E.: The Kentucky Encyclopedia, Associate editors: Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, and James C. Klotter, Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813117720.
- Noe, Kenneth W., Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, University Press of Kentucky, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8131-2209-0.
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