Turner's Battery

When General Maney’s Confederates attacked the Union left flank on the ridge in front of this position, a Confederate artillery battery commanded by Lieutenant William Turner took position here and Turner’s four cannon fired on the Union line to support Maney’s advance. After Southerners drove Union troops from the ridge, Turner moved his guns there to support the continued Confederate advance, while additional Confederate artillery under Captain William Carnes deployed on hills to the right and shelled the Union lines. Confederate artillery played a crucial role at Perryville by supporting advancing infantry brigades. Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, a respected officer in Maney’s 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment who temporarily commanded the unit during the battle, held his men in reserve as the Confederates attacked, then led them past the split rail fence to capture seven Union cannon on the hill in front. As the advance continued against another ridge 400 yards west, one soldier recalled that Patterson called on them to charge and take the Union guns before they entered a hand-to-hand fight. Patterson was killed while leading the attack on this second ridge; according to Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee, he was first shot through the hand and was wrapping it in a handkerchief when another ball killed him, while Private Marcus Toney wrote that Patterson, slightly wounded in the wrist, tied a handkerchief around it and continued giving orders until grapeshot struck his mustache, passed through his head, and killed him instantly. After the fight, two of the Union cannon captured from the hill in front were given to Turner’s Battery and engraved with the names of soldiers who had acted bravely in the battle, one bearing the name of A. T. Mitchell, a color-bearer slain at Perryville, and the other the name of Lieutenant Colonel Patterson. Later in the war, at the Battle of Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, the Union army recaptured those two guns.

Kentucky · United States