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Click 👉Today in History (general history) Oct. 8. 

On This Day in Confederate History, Oct. 8.

1862: Battle of Perryville, Ky.: Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg’s autumn 1862 invasion of Kentucky had reached the outskirts of Louisville and Cincinnati, but he was forced to retreat and regroup. On October 7, the Federal army of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, numbering nearly 55,000, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville, Kentucky, in three columns. Union forces first skirmished with Rebel cavalry on the Springfield Pike before the fighting became more general, on Peters Hill, as the gray-clad infantry arrived. 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. The fighting then stopped for a time. Afternoon, a Confederate division struck the Union left flank and forced it to fall back. When more Confederate divisions joined the fray, the Union line made a stubborn stand, counterattacked, but finally fell back with some troops routed. Buell did not know of the happenings on the field, or he would have sent forward some reserves. Even so, the Union troops on the left flank, reinforced by two brigades, stabilized their line, and the Rebel attack sputtered to a halt. Later, a Rebel brigade assaulted the Union division on the Springfield Pike but was repulsed and fell back into Perryville. The Yankees pursued, and skirmishing occurred in the streets in the evening before dark. Union reinforcements were threatening the Rebel left flank by now. Bragg, short of men and supplies, withdrew during the night, and, after pausing at Harrodsburg, continued the Confederate retrograde by way of Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee. The Confederate offensive was over, and the Union controlled Kentucky.
 [National Park Service] CASUALTIES: Federal, 845 killed, 2,851 wounded, 515 captured or missing, total-4241. Confederate, 510 killed, 2,635 wounded, 215 captured or missing.  Many of the Confederates felt they had won the battle and were upset with Bragg for withdrawing. Buell missed the battle because of the acoustical shadow.

Maj. John Calvain Brown was

among the wounded at Perryville.

Map by Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com

Click on Map to Enlarge

1863: Leroy Augustus Stafford was promoted to brigadier general on the day in 1863 and given command of the 2nd Louisiana Infantry Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia. Born in 1822 in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, Stafford was a veteran of the Mexican American War and had served as sheriff in his native parish. In 1861, he raised an infantry company called the Stafford Guards and served as its first captain in the 9th Louisiana Infantry, and fought in Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign of 1862, the Peninsula Campaign, the Second Battle of Manassas, the Battle of Sharpsburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Rappahannock Station and led his brigade in the Battle of the Wilderness where he was mortally wounded and died May 8, 1864, in Richmond, Va. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Rapides Parish. Stafford left behind a wife and 10 children.

Brig. Gen. Leroy A. Stafford

1864: Price's Missouri Expedition: Maj. Sterling Price and his Confederate cavalry raiders continued skirmishing on the way through Missouri at Rogersville, Barry County, and near Jefferson City in 1864. 

Confederate General History, Oct. 8.

Brigadier General Matthew Whitaker Ransom was born on this day in 1826 in Warren County, North Carolina. Before the war he served as North Carolina Attorney General and a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. During the war he started out as a lieutenant general in the 1st N.C. Infantry Regiment and was promoted to brigadier general June 13, 1863. His battles included Seven Pines, the Seven Days Battles, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Plymouth, Weldon, Suffolk, Petersburg, and Appomattox. He was wounded three times during the war. Following the war Ransom was a planter, lawyer, a U.S. Senator from his state and later the U.S. Minister to Mexico. He died near Garysburg, N.C. on his birthday, Oct. 8, in 1904. He was buried in the Ransom Family Cemetery near Jackson, N.C.

Brig. Matthew W. Ransom