The Ravine

For much of the Battle of Mill Springs, Union soldiers held a defense line behind a rail fence at the top of the hill while Confederate fire came from a deep ravine at the foot of the hill and from the opposite hill about 250 yards away. Colonel Speed Fry of the Union 4th Kentucky said his men there came under a galling fire from enemies concealed in the ravine. The 15th Mississippi was the first Confederate regiment to engage the Federal soldiers posted on the Mill Springs road, and as it tried to move down the hill and cross the ravine, the steep ground caused considerable delays. That delay allowed Union forces to take position behind the rail fence. The Mississippians then charged forward with bayonets fixed and large cane-knives unsheathed, but Union gunfire and artillery cut them down heavily, with one Mississippi soldier saying, "We fell a man to the minute," and another recalling that some of the best blood in the South went down. One officer remembered Union artillery firing grape shot through the ranks, killing and wounding several men. The regiment halted for a time but pressed on again when Union soldiers appeared to fall back from the fence, and the 20th Tennessee came up in support. The ravine both protected and trapped the Mississippi soldiers, and when they were forced to retreat, escaping it proved as difficult as entering it. Some of the hardest fighting of the battle took place in and around this ground, where archaeological excavations later uncovered sixty fired bullets as evidence of the intensity of the combat.

Kentucky · United States