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As Fry turned to execute the order, one of Zollicoffer’s aides rode up screaming, “General, these are the enemy,” and fired at Fry, hitting his horse. Fry and nearby Union troops returned fire and killed Zollicoffer and his aide.
Pulaski and Wayne Counties,
January 19, 1862
Kent Masterson Brown
Although relatively small in size, the battle of Mill Springs had enormous strategic importance. It broke a Confederate defense line through southern Kentucky that extended from the Mississippi River to Cumberland Gap. Never, after Mill Springs, would Kentucky form the western and northern frontier of the Confederacy.
After the battle at Wildcat Mountain in October 1861, CS Brigadier General Felix Zollicoffer moved his troops west from Cumberland Gap to Mill Springs, not far from Monticello, on the Cumberland River. They crossed the river and prepared entrenchments on the north bank near Beech Grove.
When CS Major General George B. Crittenden assumed command of the Military District of Cumberland Gap in late November, he ordered Zollicoffer to withdraw to the south bank of the Cumberland. Zollicoffer failed to move, and when Crittenden arrived to take personal command in January, he found the river at his rear and the enemy advancing. The river was swollen, and Crittenden resolved to give the enemy battle on the north bank rather than risk a river crossing.
Although US Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell was initially reluctant to order all of US Brigadier General George H. Thomas’s division forward to support US Brigadier General Albin Schoepf due to the presence of CS Brigadier General Thomas Hindman’s command at Columbia, Kentucky, he finally directed Thomas to join Schoepf at Somerset and march against Zollicoffer. Thomas’s troops marched from Lebanon, Kentucky, on muddy roads in bad weather for eighteen days to reach Logan’s Cross Roads (now Nancy), only forty miles away, on January 17. Schoepf remained near Somerset, expecting Thomas to join him there.
Crittenden took the offensive in the face of the Union threat. Moving out in a driving rainstorm at midnight, he ran into Thomas’s cavalry screen, composed of the 1st Kentucky, commanded by US Colonel Frank Wolford, on January 19. US Colonel Mahlon D. Manson then ordered his 10th Indiana and the 4th Kentucky forward, but Crittenden’s attack, spearheaded by Zollicoffer, pushed the Union regiments back. The fighting became close and confused due to the rain, fog, and smoke. During a lull, US Colonel Speed S. Fry of the 4th Kentucky rode to his flank to reconnoiter. At the same time Zollicoffer rode out to stop what he thought was Confederate fire against fellow Confederates. When the two officers met near the Union line, each thinking he was speaking to an officer on his own side, Zollicoffer ordered Fry to cease fire. As Fry turned to execute the order, one of Zollicoffer’s aides rode up screaming, “General, these are the enemy,” and fired at Fry, hitting his horse. Fry and nearby Union troops returned fire and killed Zollicoffer and his aide.
Zollicoffer’s regiments became disorganized by the loss of their commander, but they were rallied by Crittenden, who then ordered a general advance with both Zollicoffer’s brigade and that of CS Brigadier General William H. Carroll. Meanwhile Thomas arrived on the field and threw in US Brigadier General S. D. Carter’s brigade to check Crittenden’s assault. US Colonel Robert L. McCook brought up two more regiments to relieve the 10th Indiana and the 4th Kentucky. For the next half hour the two sides fought bitterly in the rain and fog until Carter gained the Confederate right and McCook the Confederate left. The Confederate left finally broke, leaving Thomas’s force in command of the field. One of the many difficulties facing Crittenden in the battle was the fact that large numbers of his troops were armed with outdated flintlock muskets, which easily fouled in the rain. Crittenden, abandoning most of his equipment, horses, and mules, withdrew his army across the Cumberland River using a commandeered sternwheeler and two flatboats.
The loss was demoralizing for the Confederates, and it signaled the abandonment of a Confederate western frontier that, at the beginning of the war, extended from Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, all across southern Kentucky to the Cumberland Gap.
Estimated Casualties: 262 US, 529 CS
