Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 436 - The Battle of Perryville

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys During the US Civil War, a group of men with some of the strangest names we've ever heard on the show accidentally fight a battle over a stagnant pond while their commanders were somewhere else. SOURCES: Breiner, Thomas L. "The Battle of Perryville: Bragg's Kentucky Invasion" Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War Hafendorfer, Kenneth A. Perryville: Battle for Kentucky. Harrison, Lowell Hayes. The Civil War in Kentucky. Sanders, Stuart W. "Carnage in Kentucky's Hills" Shepherd, Joshua. "The Battle of Perryville: Death on a Dry River."

Hey everyone, it's Joe. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you e-books, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available, and also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. Hello and welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire known world. I'm Joe with me. It's Tom and Nate fellas.

Gentlemen, scholars. How are you doing today? I am far from a scholar. Please do not use that epitone against me. Epitaph, Tom. I don't know. We're recording earlier than normal. I'm not fully awake yet. 30 minutes. Yeah, it's 10 a.m. for you. Do not put that 80s and 90s power punk record label on me. Yeah, I suppose. Do not put that Discord records on me. Do not put that fat records on me? Yeah, we are recording earlier than normal. So I've been awake since half six. So that was great. But I did get to avoid all of the terrible morning traffic because it is a Tuesday.

And I had to bring all of the stuff from the live show back to work. That's fun. It's okay, though, Tom. You know what? To me, waking up at 6.30 is completely normal. But here's the thing. I'm not going to say that it's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying, to live like me, all you got to do is bust raw.

Wait, is that how it works? Well, I mean, I'm just saying that at a certain point, specifically speaking, if it does work out and you become a parent, then you have to get up early morning all the time. And so 630 becomes, you're like, that's a normal morning for me. 6 a.m. is actually my normal wake up. This is like legitimately the worst life hack I've ever heard. This is what David Goggins left out.

Become a morning person by having a kid and then you will, you will be so tired at 9 p.m. that you will fall asleep and you'll probably either get woken up or get used to waking up early and then you're a morning person. I was never a morning person and now I am. So all I'm saying is, you know what I mean? I am a morning person. If you're in a position to do so, to have a kid, if it is one ancillary benefit. You also might get diseases that give you boils.

I am a morning person and I'm fine. I picked up something a little from traveling. So I don't feel wonderful. But you know what? I feel significantly better than anybody we're about to talk about today. Well, do you know what they do say? Hitting it roll is free. The consequences aren't.

Sounds like something my dad would say. I know that normally it's not funny to reproduce jokes, visual jokes in this medium. I understand that, but I'm going to say this because I think you guys, I have a notion that you will find it as funny as me. You may have recently seen the story the incredibly weird FBI director, Cash Patel, when he's not gambling on e-sports and being an alcoholic,

said he wanted to change the hiring practices for the FBI to allow people who would admit it to beastiality because just in case anyone who had been forced into bestiality by because of sex trafficking or whatever could still be an FBI officer. Yeah, that happens so often. It's, it's an epidemic. That's really, really odd. It's very specific. And then someone shared a picture online of like the sperm cells talking to each other and one of them says, God, I can't wait to become the next director of the FBI and the other one says, bro, we're in a dog. I did see his testimony as to why that is the case. And at any point, you find yourself insisting that you weren't like pro-beciality and you have to make that stance widely known,

you've already lost the conversation. Yeah, it's such an odd hill to die on is the thing. And I realize this isn't the topic of today's episode. But I found it so there's something so deeply distressing about someone who has that kind of like you know mugshot after getting caught while driving on ketamine look about him that Cash Patel does and you're like what is this man a true believer in

and it's that it's going to lead to a civil war between the police and the FBI because the police are so busy shooting dogs and the new the new hires are going to be like no no that's not what we're here for no it's a real categoric difference between fucking pigs and fucking pigs

yeah that kind of implies that the FBI is going to have their own sacred band of thieves. The canine unit, the dog, handers in the dog. Once again, you know, categorically is like busting raw brackets good, busting raw, bracket's bad. Yeah, this is already taken a really dark turn in this episode. This is what happens when, I guess, when we decided to record half an hour earlier is that our brains are still, our brains are still unformed in the sort of morass.

And these are the jokes we come up with. Anyway, let's talk about our most, you know, bourbon bastard fucking boring, dusty book, history weirdo podcast topic. We can possibly talk about the most normie history podcast topic, the Civil War. Not because you did something wrong, Joe, but rather because this will attract a kind of listener who's like, oh, a Civil War podcast, something erudite. And then they listen to us. They're already gone.

Fucking dogs. Good. Good. They checked the fuck out. So today's episode brings us back to the American Civil War to a part of it that we have never really spoken about, but that is the Confederate invasion of Kentucky. But more than that, we're going to talk about the largest battle that has ever taken place in the state of Kentucky through a strange amount of accidents, mistakes, and not having enough water. Also, it is statistically

one of the deadliest battles in the entire Civil War based on the amount of people that were taking part in it. So every soldier involved, their piss looked the same as mine as when I got home last night after the live show. I was like, oh, I've drank maybe 20 pints of Beamish slash Murphys over the course of three

days and no water. Every single one of them, statistically speaking, had the same accent as you. Actually, hold that thought. Fuck off. A side note, I don't remember hardly anything, but I did a staff ride when I was an RTC cadet at this battle.

I'm not going to give away the name because Joe hasn't yet. And that would be rude for me to give away. So I should be a subject matter expert because I had to read a book about it. But that was 20 years ago and I do not remember shit. So I'm just going to be like, I have a mental image to compare it to. I'm like, I know what that looks like. Other than that, though, I'm also a blank slate. Going into this on a staff ride is really funny to me.

For people who don't know staff rides and they chuck a whole bunch of officers and drive them around battlefields and you like learn lessons from them and shit. And like the only thing that you were going to learn from studying this battlefield is like, hey, maybe make sure your soldiers have fucking water. Yeah, yeah, the terrain, looking at how you use the train is interesting, but the thing about it is is oftentimes it's so different in terms of like the trees, et cetera, that like you can't, I mean, in one case, I did a staff right at a Civil War battle outside of Atlanta and there was just tracked housing all around us.

Genuinely, there was like McMansions. You could see through the woods everywhere. It's like, how am I going to set up my old-timey musket firing position next to, you know, like the grove or whatever it's called, you know, deerborn hills. but deer born with an E at the end of it for some reason. Well, they have to make it different than the Michigan one because they would never go there for reasons. Yeah, I suppose.

I mean, or they basically all American tract housing either sounds like a golf club or like sort of cosplaying is Scottish. But let's move on because otherwise you and I are just going to have too much fun. So today we're talking about the Battle of Perryville. But first, the bluegrass of context. I'm not proud of that one.

You shouldn't be. For people who don't know, Kentucky's the bluegrass state. All right, fuck off. It's the bluegrass state it is. I just looked at the ground because I said, Joe's done it again. Much like the person who runs Cash Patel's doggy daycare. No.

He's done it again. I should start off here by saying, of all of the episodes we've ever done, this might have the most name alerts of all time. And I don't know how we're ever going to top it. I really don't. And it's 99% is the why we're covering it. We need to, before we get into it,

invoke Nate's Maxim of Civil War names. Okay, but there isn't an alpha. in the situation. They're all like Leonidas Jebediah. I had a weird-ass dude that I had to sort of learn the story of, I think he was, I can't remember if it was a, I think it was a Confederate general or Confederate officer. And I'm wondering if

he's the name alert. Like, I don't even remember his name. It was just goofy. Oh, Nate, there is so many name alerts here. Okay. Well, hey, it's America in the mid-1800. So, like, you know, as we've said before, your name might be Seamus O Seamus because you were drafted off the boat. Your name might be,

you know, Lorenzo Smith, because your mom read a 19th century novel. It's like Lorenzo sounds nice, but your family is all from England. Your name could be Al-Fuck. It was changed at Proto Ellis Island. I don't know. I don't think that there's a single normally named person in this entire episode. Let's go.

It is kind of amazing that no one had normal names in the English language back then. They weren't allowed. To make a very long story short, Kentucky is an interesting case during the American Civil War. Culturally and geographically split between northern and southern causes. The state government led by the wonderfully named government. and Southern sympathizer, Beriah McGuffin. Yes.

Decided to become the American state of Switzerland because during the Civil War he declared neutrality and refused to officially take part in the war in any fashion. The people, however,

were a different story. Yeah, they were all fucking pro-slavery, Jesus Christ. Not all of them. Hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians fought for the union and tens of thousands fought for the Confederacy.

significantly more people from Kentucky fought for the union. I actually didn't know that because I know that the politicians and the like the landholding class were quite pro-slavery, but I guess that makes sense. It's weird because Indiana is the opposite. It was a union state, but there are parts of Southern Indiana that sent volunteers to fight for the Confederacy because they were so pro that mentality. That happened in a lot of states. Kentucky's probably one the more famous ones thanks to their orphans brigade, as they called themselves, which look, I know they're all slave owners, but that's a pretty sick name to pick for yourself when you're doing that kind of thing. I guess. One of the things that you'll also find, too, is that places like Kentucky, which have pretty horrendous terrain, much like West Virginia, the white population tended to not be wealthy

enough to own slaves and tended to be anti-slavery because of the fact that, like, it made their lives worse that the land-owning sort of captains of industry had a permanent free workforce. Yeah. So that is a factor. If you're not familiar with the U.S. state of Kentucky, like, it's not, it's not Colorado mountainous, but it's pretty rugged terrain in general. I was stationed there for too many years. It's not a fun place to have to do maneuvers in. And even the state's military was divided amongst these lines. The state guard being pro-southern and its home guard based in Louisville being pro-union.

Both the union and the Confederacy understood how important Kentucky was to their overall war aims and both built garrisons on the state borders. So, you know, volunteers from within the state could then trickle out and into them. It's funny because there's one, I don't remember which side this was, and this shows me how great my education was growing up, that there was someone who said, we'd like to have God on our side, but we must have Kentucky. And I can't remember if that was the Confederates or the Union, but someone said it. The governor being pro-South, while the State Assembly being pro-North or, at the very least, pro-neutrality, led to endless clashes until McGuffin resigned and through various different forms of backdoor politicking, made sure that he was replaced by a different pro-southerner, James Rod. So he was basically a throwaway plot device is what you're saying? I mean, it's context, Nate. No, I...

In response, the union opened a recruitment and training camp within state borders, which was in violation of Kentucky's neutrality. And to that, I say, well, you're a state of the union. You don't get to have your own border policy. The South responded by invading and taking over the town of Columbus, home to a very important rail terminus. In Kentucky's neutrality, pretty much crumbled after. After that, more union forces move into secure rail logistics and important supply arteries.

Confederates do the same thing, and by October of 1861, Kentucky was split, with the pro-Confederate government of Kentucky set up in Russellville and then eventually Bowling Green, and the pro-union being set up in Frankfurt. Though I should point out since these are American names, this is spelled Frankfurt. This will not be the only strange name American city we end up talking about. Or it's Kentucky in the 1800s. Town. It's not a city. Yeah, yeah. I should point out here that the Confederate government in Kentucky was little more than some scribbles on a piece of paper. It really controlled very little.

It barely attempted to be an actual government. And then this kind of had a whole wrench thrown into it when their unelected governor was eventually killed fighting for the Confederacy over in Tennessee. While there are numerous small battles in Kentucky, nothing of note really happened there until 1862 when the Union forces began driving the Confederacy. Confederates out of the state. Finally, Confederate forces under Pierre Gustav to Tont Beauregard, a man he had talked about. That was the guy. That's who I was. I had to take the role. Yeah, I had to play the role of Beauregard. Yeah. We've talked about him before and his forces and the Confederates in general lost control of their part of Kentucky, at least temporarily. Because pretty much as soon as the Confederates lost ground, Confederate raiders, most importantly

and infamously, Morgan's Raiders, stormed back through Kentucky. And Morgan Raiders is a pretty interesting story. We'll eventually talk about them at depth sometime in the future. So Civil Warheads don't get mad at me. We really got to move on. And it gives the Confederates hopes for Kentucky invasion in the future. Bowie Guard gets fired and Braxton Bragg is put in command of the Army of Mississippi. Other type of fucking American name Braxton Bragg. Bragg is the person that Fort Bragg was named after also. So in a way, it's like so part of the wallpaper, we forget how weird of a name that is. Yep. Yep. And after giving command, he just kind of sits around in Mississippi for a while, not entirely sure as to what to do next.

Bragg is an, let's say, interesting character. He was born to a very poor family in North Carolina, whose father, a complete and total psycho, had been campaigning since Bragg was 10 years old to try to get all the references required to set his kid to West Point. And by 16, he finally succeeds. And he goes to school there. He graduates. He's fifth in his class. and he gets involved with the artillery. From there, he serves in the Seminole War in Florida, and he earns two reputations, being an absolute tyrant while being in charge of supplies, and of course his own men. And I would argue that that first one is actually fine. You want the guy in charge of your supplies

to really refuse to let a single bean or bullet go missing. I'm sorry to phrase bean or bullet just fucking sending me. And beans and bullets is extremely like an army logistics term, like very much so. The two most important things, not named Water, which will become important later. A really confused cook just stirring a big pot of chili, but it's made with bullets. I've made the world's worst gumbo. Gunbo. Gunbo.

Oh, God, dude. Boo. However, he was such a strict disciplinarian, was such an uncompromising, abrasive personality that allegedly, his, own men plotted to kill him at least twice. This is what happens if you try to take the Baron von Steuben myth, or story, I suppose, and make it into your own. He wasn't camp enough to be Baron von Steuben. It's interesting because discipline back then was just hitting people.

Yeah. So like, Brax and Bragg was absolutely beaten the shit out of his soldiers. But his men weren't the only people who hated him. Virtually every other officer who ever worked with him hated his guts. Anyone who criticized him or attempted to offer suggestions on how to maybe do something differently, two things. I should point out are incredibly important bits of information for any leader to absorb. Bragg would take them as personal insults. He was also completely and totally unforgiving.

If he hated someone, for any reason, he would never let go of that grudge pretty much ever, Like it was some kind of old world blood feud or roughly how your average American feels about the concepts of bicycle lanes. If someone so much has slighted him a little bit, it's like, oh, you've made an enemy for life. Yeah, I feel like the way that people were back then magnifies this to the point where Sigmund Freud was just kind of shooting fish in a barrel because there were so many people with weird fixations that obviously really kind of fucked up trauma earlier in their lives. And he's just like, I'll just guess randomly. It turns out, yeah, he kind of nailed it. This sounds, because you're like, if his dad was a psycho and he was a psycho, it's sort of like, hmm, bet there was something going on there.

The Confederate Oediple urge, except, except the, uh, the subject of Oedipus's desires is slavery. His dad, I consider like the 1800s version of a sports dad, except sport, like organized sports were really a thing yet, so you could only pressure your kid into joining the military. Whereas Braxton Bragg is just a violent asshole. Braxton Bragg also is like first draft pick in the NFL. like the, I bought it spelled with like three X's. Braxton Bragg is the name of a lineman who went to the University of Alabama. No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Well, the problem is it keeping it, keeping it all straight because

there would be a Braxton Bragg, a Jackson Bragg, a Jackson Bragg, all sorts of different permutations on this name. Jackson Bragg is more of a hockey name, unfortunately. I was going to say Jackson Bragg is probably, you could lean towards quarterback with the name like that. That's true, maybe. These constant feuds and blowups led to him nearly being killed by even more people on his side. For example, in one alleged account during the Battle of Chickamauga, which takes place

about a year after the events we're talking about today and we'll cover it at some point. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a mass murderer and one of the founders of the first KKK, threatened to kill him in his tent if Breg ever attempted to give him an order again.

Though that account is somewhat disputed, it does fit both men's personality. The last thing I'll say about Bragg's personality goes back to one of my least favorite people that Ken Burns has ever introduced into the American lexicon. Shelby Foot. I don't know if you guys have ever been exposed to Shelby Foot. If you've ever watched Ken Burns series on the Civil War, you'll know Shelby Foot immediately because he is the incredibly southern man with the most soothing radio voice you've ever heard in your life, which is why he became so popular. brag with 3X's Shelby Foot.

We're just naming niche only fans creators now. Shelby Feet. I feel comfortable saying the joke because I know Shelby Foot would hate it. No, it's not Shelby Feet. It's Shelby Foot. He keeps like one like foot in a Vaseline

filled sock, like the handball. Like the guy from of mice and men. Yeah. Curly. Yeah. I don't know. Shelby, Shelby Foot. Shelby Foot picks. Shelby feet picks. There's a lot of stuff out there we could go with, but I'm vaguely familiar. Shelby Foote's voice and Ken Burns' improbable hairline, those are two indelible memories for me.

Yeah, and without going too far into his history, because there's a lot there. Shelby Foote is a lost causer through and through who refused to ever accept that the Civil War is about slavery. He had a portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest hanging in his office and even defended the first KKK. Anyway, even he, a man who always made sure to say as many nice things as he possibly could about any Confederate he ever spoke or wrote about, shit on Brax and Bragg constantly. He pointed out that Bragg would rather lose a battle than win and have to share in the success, which is just about the most negative thing Shelby Foote has ever said about a Confederate. I'm just thinking of Shelby Foote's only fans' content being very well directed as just a slow panning picture of a

foot. You see the toes and then it slowly pans down to the heel. There's like a 50% fade of like Appalachian Mountains and there's a person reading a letter over it. Dear Mama. With the Ken Byrd voice. Yeah, this might be the last time I'm able to massage my feet. Wait, this, I'm sorry, this implies Ken Burns ASMR. Yes, it does. Can you imagine Ken Burns, J-O-I? That is what the Ken Byrd's letter reading parts of that series are. It's just like it's ASMR for people who have someone related to them, was a member of like the daughters of Confederate veterans organization. Yeah, I was going to say it is lost cause ASMR. Yeah.

He would later go on to fight the Mexican-American War, attain the rank of colonel, and then resign in 1855, and do what every southern boy dreams of, buy a large plantation with about 100 slaves. He was involved in the buildup of the Confederate military before the war even started. Since then, he had little experience in direct command, but he was known for being pretty good at managing supplies. His mid and subordinates always hated him for his shitty personality, and demanding discipline requirements,

but they generally were okay on supplies, which is more than what you can say about other Confederate units. Some historians suggest that Bragg's nearly constant bad mood and abrasive personality and willingness to confront anyone about everything had to do with his lifelong health problems, namely a near constant case of diarrhea. I was going to make that up as a joke. You'll have to forgive General Bragg.

He's got the poopy pants, so he's never very happy. He also had constant joint pain and heartburn. People think it had to do with rheumatism. But look, I've had diarrhea before for pretty long period of time. It never caused me to do something so bad that people attempted to kill me that were actually my coworkers. Yeah, it's not included on the doctor's chart of like how solid your stool is. It's like the secret like last stop of like, oh, your stool is loose. Oh, you want to own people.

Yeah, it's the off menu or the secret menu for the stool chart. The in and out secret diarrhea menu. Getting it animal style except you're crouched on the ground on all fours. I was thinking like, yeah, imagine how difficult it would be to get gluten-free hardtack. Maybe he had celiac disease. It's thought that this never-ending stream of symptoms caused him to age prematurely. because despite him only being in his 40s during the war, a British journalist described him as looking, quote,

elderly looking. Have you ever shit so much you fucking look like you're 80? I've shit so much I felt like I was 80. Yeah, you get diarrhea so bad you do the reverse Benjamin Button. Yeah, there was a while this year where I spent like, Benjamin Button just got older. He got younger. Did he?

I was right the first time. Yeah, you were. Joe completely misunderstanding the concept of Pedro. He just gets old. What's the point of this movie? He gets old really fat. Leave you alone. That's the movie Jack with Robert Williams

where he looks for him in his 10. Both those movies are shit. Yeah, they're terrible. Facing him was General Don Carlos Buell and his army of the Ohio. Buell was in short, another asshole. He was short-tempered, introverted,

and fanatically Christian even for his era. And his last name was Buell, so it sounds like it's probably somewhere from England, Great Britain or Ireland, maybe a bastardized German name. His first name is Don Carlos. Yeah, his mom and dad really liked some sort of like counterfeited Cervantes story that was popular. There was like paperbacks in 1810 or whatever, and they decided to name it. It's like, we have it the same way with people naming their kids after fucking Game of Thrones. But that was happening back then with novels that no one remembers.

The bootleg version of Don Quixote, like you're buying a DVD off a lucky, lucky man outside a pub in Spain in 2009. That's like shot from the back of the cinema. I don't know, he like charges at trees or some shit. He was once nearly court-martialed for beating an enlisted man with the flat side of his sword for talking out of turn. Buell had been ordered to march for Chattanooga and then eventually Mississippi, but was getting badly bogged down. Bragg, sitting in Tupelo, Mississippi, decided the best way to stop the Union advance was to divert their attention elsewhere, so his eyes fell on Kentucky. An invasion of Kentucky did make sense, in a way. Morgan's raiders had been raising hell, and they roused a fair amount of popular support with people in Southern Kentucky, making union leadership scared of a kind of general uprising.

Furthermore, Kentucky was home to a lot of things the Confederates desperately needed for their war effort. its riverine access would help them open up the Mississippi. There's rail lines, there's agricultural supplies, there was manpower, because the Confederates never had any of this shit the second the war popped off. This is what happens when an agricultural slave state tries to do a war. It wasn't as important as some of its slave-owning border states, like Maryland, for example, but it was important enough. However, Bragg couldn't just easily travel from Tupelo to Chattanooga, thanks to the railroads

being mangled. Instead, he would load 35,000 men up. up and was forced to go south, all the way to Mobile, Alabama, where they be loaded into steamships, cross Mobile Bay, get on a different train, go north, switch to several other trains, and eventually having to switch to six different rail lines and cover a thousand miles to get to Chattanooga by the end of July. Fucking trains, planes, and automobiles. And you booed at the context line. Ah, fuck off.

Also, weirdly, the Confederate seemingly had an easier time making this trip using the rail than an American would today. Bragg moved his troops so fast and so far away that by the time that he marched into Kentucky in August, nobody had any idea where they were. By the time Buell figured out where they had gone, he forced his Army of the Ohio to turn around and march hard and try to keep up. All right, so it's August. It's Kentucky.

And as a former soldier who, like I said, was stuck in Kentucky for a few too many years and did my basic training in tank school there, I can attest that it gets fucking miserable in August in Kentucky. And that's with all the comforts of it being in the 2000s. It's 1862. Men are hoofing it and only carrying the water in their canteens, which of course they're drawing from the nearby wells, streams, whatever. But the summer of 1862 was the hottest and driest on record. The wells, the creeks, and even the rivers that men would depend on for water were drying up. And what they did find, they called pond water because it was so mixed with mud and silt. Or it had been contaminated with dead livestock who had dropped it out of its

banks from thirst. The worst kind of drinking on that cup of mold. In case you're wondering, yes, this made everyone violently ill, but they had to drink it anyway because they had nothing else. So now everybody's got that diarrhea. Now, good news is that's definitely not going to affect the water supply quite quickly in terms of perfect entropy of shitting yourself and then it going into the river water, then you drink it to rehydrate and you get it worse. You know, there's going to be some

asshole shitting directly into the pond water that you're forced to drink. It's what if your division strength element was also the human centipede? I hate when my water's chunky. And they hadn't figured out the concept of boiling stuff to sterilize it. I mean, not really.

This isn't like the Stone Age. This isn't like the Middle Ages, but like, even if it was understood to some extent of like sanitation. They would not have had the resources to do that and they wouldn't have done it. And they also didn't have the time because they're marching incredibly quickly. So like they're not sitting down and camping for very long. Men are literally like dropping down into all fours and sucking this shit up like a hog. Yeah.

This is basically like the thing you forget is that America is built on suffering. America is built on the bones and graves of enslaved people and, you know, the victims of genocide. But it's also built on the bones of dudes who died shitting themselves to death. And in some cases, because of. of the way that like the roads that existed then are the roads that exist now. We basically have Roman roads of like packed earth of the bones of dudes who shit themselves

to death over and over again. And also the packed layers of poop. Gotta pack it down. Yeah, that's kind of like cement in a way. A lot of people who don't like our crass humor on this show and our propensity to talk about bowel movements. Well, do you know what?

We have gotten yet another example of plot critical shits. Yeah. On two different occasions. There's a reason why we talk about it. I mean, I'm sorry, but you're making a work of kits if you try to represent the Civil War and you don't talk about everyone having diarrhea all the time. Because if you actually go back and look at the primary sources, that's all they fucking talk about. I'm so hungry.

My boots don't fit. I don't have boots. My boots. My boots are too big. My boots are too small. And then I'm shitting. I ate my boots. I shout out my boots. Boots were still bad.

The Tommy Hort's war. If you read soldiers letters from the Civil War era, all as it is is like complaining about how hungry are and how miserable they are. So still the Union and Confederate commanders drove their soldiers hard in what would look like a race for Kentucky. And the Confederates were winning, at least at first. They took several towns, but then Bragg's forces got bogged down at Mumfordville. Bragg dug in and assumed Buell would have no choice but to attack him. Instead, Buell went around him and marched for Louisville.

His force is nearly dead on their feet by the time they took it over in the middle of September. This is actually a pretty smart move on Buell's part and the last time in this episode, I will say those. words. Louisville could act as a supply point, like which he did not have. He had nowhere to draw supplies from. But to his superiors, it looked like he had marched all the way from Mississippi to Kentucky, purposely dodged Confederate armies, and not fought a single battle. So on September 29th, 1862, he was surprised and learned that he had been fired and replaced by General George Thomas. But then, that didn't happen. Thomas wrote to their boss, General and Chief Henry Halleck, saying that it didn't make sense to switch out commanders in the middle of an active campaign.

Halleck agreed, leaving Buell in place, even though he had already learned he'd been fired, effectively letting him believe his entire career now rested on how all of this turned out. So rather than letting his army rest like he intended and resupply, most importantly with water, he immediately ordered them back on the march, trying to keep his job. Thomas remained a corps commander under Buell, but that wasn't the only weird thing going on with his subordinates. General Charles Champion Gilbert, that is not a nickname,

was also something of a rank gray zone. So in a previous battle that they were fighting, a general had been wounded and his command would need to be replaced. So the department commander had to find someone to promote. Two other men were promoted to the rank of general, but then refused the promotion because they didn't want to take over for him, leading him instead to promote Gilbert.

on a brevet or acting rank pending approval from the president, Abraham Lincoln, who had to approve of anybody being promoted to the rank of general. But then, Buell immediately appointed him corps commander of the Army of Kentucky, despite the fact he was still technically a colonel. Another corps commander of Buell's was General Alexander McDowell McCook, from a family of soldiers so loyal to the union that his dad, seven brothers, and five cousins all volunteered for the army. during the war and most of them would end up being generals. Also, Buell hated him too. His last core commander was General Thomas Leonidas Crittenden. Yep. He was a lawyer from Russellville, Kentucky.

I have nothing good or bad to say about him. He seems like he's a perfectly competent leader, which is really all you can ask for in the stage in the Union Army during the Civil War. I just want to point out his name. And in case you're wondering, is Thomas Leonidas Crittenden the only Leonidas in this episode? No, of course not. Confederate officer Leonidas Polk was serving under Braxton Bragg, commanding one of the wings of his army.

It's Leonidas is all the way down. So the three cores of the Army of the Ohio moved in a wide arc from Louisville, towards Bardstown, and the Confederates have no idea where their ultimate goal is at this point, which makes sense because Buell didn't either. He had no end point here. He was just moving to find the Confederate military. They start to believe it might be the capital of Frankfurt, but it's not. And then maybe down to Versailles, spelled Versailles, but it's not.

And eventually Bragg leaves his army and goes to Frankfurt, leaving command to Leonidas Polk. Polk is determined to figure out what Buell's plan is. So he ordered the other wing commander of his army, General William Hardy, spelled like the fast food restaurant, who was pulling back from the Union advance and ended up stopping at Perryville. Hardy pulls his men in some nearby hills and does just that. does just that. Bragg thought whatever the Union forces marching towards Perryville must be little more than a distraction and decide to punish Polk for overreacting and also just to get rid of him because Bragg, of course, hated him too. Bragg orders Polk to take another division and

march towards Perryville to take command personally, giving him 17,000 men in total. As Polk and Hardy wait, the entire 55,000 man army of the Ohio appeared, and Buell was convinced that he was facing Bragg's entire army too, rather than just part of it. So instead of attacking immediately, he decided to wait until all three of his corps joined together the next morning. Also, he wanted to wait

because he had fallen off of his horse and got hurt and he couldn't get out of bed. Whoops. Yep. You would think a guy who only mode of transportation could ride a horse better, but whatever. On October 7th, the two sides met in a brief skirmish near Springfield Pike. The commander of the Confederate cavalry,

Joseph Wheeler, made sure to alert Polk that, uh, sir, there seems to be a whole lot more people out here than you originally thought there was. And they immediately come to the conclusion that this is probably not the distraction that Bragg thinks it is. General William Hardy writes to Bragg, who is two miles away at the time, saying, quote, tomorrow morning early we may expect to fight. If the enemy does not attack us, you ought to. Unless pressed in another direction, send forward all reinforcements necessary. Take command in person and wipe them out. Now, that makes sense. I mean, I would say it's a pretty forward letter for a subordinate to write his commanding general, but it does make sense that the

commanding general should take command of, you know, his whole army and fight the Confederates. You would think Bragg would answer this and probably being upset, but instead he answers it by ordering Hardy to go on the attack immediately, while the rest of the army wasn't even there yet. So now this stage was set for a major battle to take place between the armies of the Ohio and Mississippi and neither army's commander was actually there. But the Battle of Perryville wouldn't start with a sweeping flanking action, a daring cavalry charge. No, instead, it would start by accident. Both armies were still desperately, desperately short on water. So when the kind of sort of General Gilbert sent his men in and found a stagnant half-dried creek called

Doctors Creek, Buell from his bed ordered him to seize it immediately. Yeah, they're They heard the name Doctor's Creek and was like, this is what we need. It's revitalizing and not if you drink this water, you will need a doctor. It's a health tonic. Also on the like, the side of Bragg, it is very hard to maybe get like a surprise flanking

maneuver going when your opponents can smell you downwind. That's why he had to stay two miles away. You can't stop shit in his pants. The stink line army? Yeah, also it's like Dr. Screek because it's actually a lumberjack camp because doctors in lumberjacks were basically the same thing back then in terms of the tools they used.

Yeah, it's like the barber surgeon. I remember a long time ago, Joe, me and you postulated the theory of when you go into a public bathroom, you can always tell when someone has blown it up because like there's a slight humidity to the air. Even if you can't smell it, you can feel it. It's like, you know, barometric pressure changing before a hurricane. And it's like, you can feel Braxton Bragg's army approaching. Just like, yeah, just the humidity changes. It's like a natural disaster animals can sense at first. Just so you understand just how bad off

the troops were, this creek's water was described by one Union soldier who willingly drank it as quote where one with a spoon could dip water enough into a canteen to keep down thirst, yet possessing sand and mud enough to pave the throats of those who drink it.

You don't want your throat paved? Got to chew on that water boy. Gilbert ordered Colonel Daniel McCook yes, a brother of the other McCook in the other army, to lead his men forward to do the job. To do so, he would need to march up Peters Hill, which had a commanding view of the creek, and immediately came under fire from the nearby 7th Arkansas Regiment. But the Confederates were chased off, taking up position on the other side of the valley in a place called Bottom Hill.

That's for you two. Well, I was just going to say it's the bottom of the hill. That's why it's bottom hill. I feel like that's actually quite homophobic, Joe, for you to assume that I would relate. to that. Yeah. I'm not happy with that joke. No. Not every layup I throw you gets put in the net, all right. You know, there could be top peak.

There could be switch ridge. There could be a lot of things. Powerbotton burrows, you know. Yeah. There is a bottom farm. Glory hole hauler. I don't know. Every hauler is a glory hole holler. Sides Creek. Who knows? The union men dug into Peters Hill, bringing up artillery along with them.

Enter the 7th Arkansas commander General St. John Richardson Little. Yes. What a fucking name. Yeah, I was thinking that like McAllister, McCall, McCook, like those were all three last names guys. That was going to stick in my mind the most, but this just feels like Madlibs. Oh, don't worry, the best is yet to come.

All right. Little is a guy we should take a second on because stupid name aside. He's a great portrait of the Confederacy. He was born into a wealthy slave-owning family. He owned hundreds of slaves himself. and it was a proponent, once in Confederate government, of freeing the slaves. But just so that Europe might recognize the Confederacy as an independent country.

He also hated Braxton Braggs so much when he wrote his own memoirs. He dedicated a huge amount of it to shit-talking him, which is a level of petty I could nod silently at. I was just thinking about what a mean sort of parody version of Braxton Bragg's name would be in like the salty memoirs. But it's like, unfortunately, the first thing that came to mind sounds too homophiles. even for me to say. So it's just sort of like there's got to be a different one. Daxton, Dag. Claxton, Clag.

I'm not sure. You can't use the letter F, unfortunately. Bracton Slag. Yeah. Little didn't know the union had dug into Peters Hill and immediately orders his men to take it so they could scare the shitty muddy water creek. His men attacked and were blasted the shit and blood by Union cannons and muskets,

driving them back. This left Gilbert in a weird place. He had taken the creek, but had no follow-up orders. So he ran back to where Buell was to ask him what to do. He turned to the commander of his cavalry and, in my opinion, the grand champion of today's name alert bracket. Captain Ebenezer Gay. Yes.

Yes. This sounds like the first draft of like a fucking ninth grader's essay on a Christmas carrel because he hated the book. This is what Jacob Marley was calling Ebenezer Scrooge behind the back. Ghost of Christmas present and you get to be a fly on the wall and watch everyone be really homophobic about you. I really hope his ancestors are cursing him for not changing his name because they're probably still kicking around with that Sir David 2026 of the South. I mean, that's the thing, though, is that like at a certain point, you just kind of own it. I mean, just like there was the guy who was a senior chief master sergeant in the Air Force. His name was Steve Come.

I'm not making that one up. Like, is his name. Yes. Yes. I remember that doing its rounds. Yeah. So Captain Ebenezer Gay was ordered to charge through the valley and cleared of all Confederate forces without infantry support, which is not exactly what you want to do. You absolutely know he did not sit on a chair normal style.

Like he's riding a horse crisscross applesauce. So unfortunately, gay and his men were denied bottom hill. You're welcome. You know, if we were the ones, if we were. were doing it, then you'd be like, why are you, why am I? And then you're like, I know, I'm going to take the initiative and do it to you guys. And we're like, yep. Yeah, usually we, we're doing the version of Smithers with the strippers with Joe about like gay lingo. It's the reverse and we're just like completely unimpressed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're

welcome. To be fair, in this situation, I would be the stripper making you uncomfortable. And that is inherently unimpressive. I don't know, Joe. We've seen you when you had to change shirts in the hotel room. You could do a male stripper if you wanted to be. I don't have the rhythm. I just don't. It's like, have you ever wanted to go to a stripper and watch them dance like a wooden plank? That's your experience with me. I feel like there are people who are like, I, I, it's just so fucked up, actually.

It's sort of like the cuck chair experience. It's like people want to see the stripper who's not sure of himself. There are people who would pay for that. Your uncertainty and indecisiveness, your discomfort with the situation. That would be a draw. It just probably wouldn't be women, unfortunately. It might be, though. I would go out.

My music would hit, which would just be silence. And I would just hit the shingy on the chair in the middle of the stage. I've got a better one, Joe. Your male stripper act involves the stage set that's nothing but drywall like a bedroom and a tract home in the Midwest. And fucking some kind of new metal comes on and you just start punching holes in the drywall but taking your clothes off the whole time. People would go nuts for that.

Your stripper name has to be Kyle, though. Yeah, that's fair. At this point, Gilbert just kind of refused. to do anything without Buell giving direct orders. But Buell wasn't giving any orders at all. The battle had started, but he seemed to just want to hit the pause button and wait, despite the fact he's now dug into a hill and outnumbered by the Confederates by thousands. One of his division commanders, however, knew muskets were already firing and the fight was on, and it needed to be brought to an end. General Philip Sheridan,

a tiny little guy that President Lincoln once described his appearance as, quote, a brown chunky little chap with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch he can scratch them without stooping. Would that be the most ugly description of another man I've ever read in my life?

I can't even like draw a beat on what the prejudice is supposed to imply here. I think President Lincoln just thinks he's ugly. Okay, but fucking takes one to no one. Goodness gracious. Abraham Lincoln basically looked like, I don't know. Yeah, but he was jacked.

He had a fucked up face, but he was jacked. Yeah, he was a really good wrestler. Abraham Lincoln, the first notable example of a male butter face. I was just going to say, this is one of those just like our audience might get and Tom definitely. Well, Tom might get, Joe definitely won't. But it's like, okay, so Abraham Lincoln was really tall, lanky, actually weirdly strong, very, very goofy looking and extremely homosexual. So what you're saying is he is the lead singer of Deer Hunter. Abraham Lincoln allegedly

Evented the choke slam It's not entirely confirmed But there is apocryphal stories Also his parents were Irish Catholic Immigrants from County Cavan Now he isn't the only Irish guy We've talked about Of course not we're talking about the Civil War

But he's the most directly Irish guy We've talked about He is first generation Sheridan was a short king Who loved fist fighting people And in fact he was suspended from West Point due to fighting his fellow classmate, a guy named William Terrell,

who was also in the same army in the same battle. I know I keep doing this, but Terrell was born in Virginia and his entire family joined the Confederacy. When his father threatened to disown him unless he resigned his commission and join the Confederate military, he publicly called his dad a traitor. Dudes rock. Yeah, I mean, all right, I respect this.

I mean, I know it's easy for me to say I would do that because I hate my father. but like I assume up until that point they're at least moderately close he like wrote an op-ed about it my dad's not important enough for me to write an opet called my dad sucks but you know I can understand the spirit yeah anyway Sheridan without orders from anyone

ordered his division into the valley and chase the Confederates out Sheridan demands that he be allowed to continue pressing his attack saying quote if he and he means Buell here will let me go I will drive them straight to hell However, Gilbert doesn't pass on his demand, and despite the fact he's currently in charge of the actual battle taking place, just does nothing other than order shared in his division back to Peters Hill, giving up everything he just gained. At this point, you might be wondering, why isn't Buell giving any orders? Well, he didn't know there was a battle going on, and it does kind of make sense why he doesn't order Gilbert to do anything, really?

He's two miles away. Gilbert isn't telling him anything, nor does Gilbert want to let Sheridan go on the attack, so that Union Force had just kind of sit there and follow Buell's original orders to just wait until all three cores are together for the attack the next morning, despite the fact they're currently in a battle. Meanwhile, Bragg had arrived in Perryville to take command personally, because in his opinion, both Hardy and Polk had disobeyed his orders and refused to go on the attack, so he clearly needed to take.

to do it himself. Bragg was still insistent that they were only facing a portion of the Army of the Ohio, despite what everyone else was telling him. He then ordered Polk to lead an attack around the Dixville crossing, which Confederate intelligence said was supposed to be the exposed flank of the Union left. He would be supported by General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham. Solid name, but zero military education. He was mostly known for getting blind drunk and being one of Tennessee's richest slave-owning families. There's a part of me that also feels like being notable for getting drunk in this era means you really, it's like, it's like Elton John being notable for using a lot of cocaine

in the 70s of Los Angeles. Like, you have to really, really be batting above the average. Yeah, for being, not only being from one of the richest slave-owning families in Tennessee, which again, huge mountain to be on the top of, also a terrible mountain, to being a drunk that is notable for being a drunk in 1862. And getting in too many fights, all things that he is doing. The rebels bombard the Union men at the crossroads for an hour and then Cheathomsmen charged in and then quickly discovered that Confederate intelligence is an oxymoronic concept. It wasn't the Union flank they were attacking.

Instead, it was the direct center of General McCook's entire core, all of which began unloading cannons and musket fire directly into them. I'm going to defer to the officer among our ranks. Nate, can we get a tactics check right now? Is it good to charge directly into an entire core of soldiers while they have the high ground? No. The only thing I would say in a situation like this is where you could potentially do that is to charge directly into that fire support and fuck that up. That might be a good idea, but going right into like the stuff they've dialed in into the sort of main body center mass of the element that's bigger than you. No, I wouldn't do that.

I think that's bad. Yeah. It's less than ideal. Rather than breaking and running, which is probably what everybody expected, Cheatham shifted to McCook's flank because now he was close enough to actually see it, on a hill called Open Knob. That's right. All the hills get weird names.

Ebenees are gay fighting on Open Knob Hill. Exactly. He wasn't able to take control of Bottom Hill, but he's up on Open Knob. He's diverse. He ordered more men towards Open Knob, and since these men were virtually all veterans of the horrifically violent Battle of Shiloh, they had already seen some shit. Facing them was General William Terrell, the guy we already talked about a little bit, who had a single regiment, along with eight cannons, and which for those who don't know, this is not exactly enough to anchor an entire army's flank. The attacking Confederates were protected thanks to the environment

as well, which is something that Terrell either didn't notice when setting up on the hill or didn't think it was that important. The area in front of open knob was rolling hills, meaning soldiers on top of the hill couldn't actually see directly down it until they were only 180 meters away. Terrell ran forward to command the artillery guns personally, firing canister rounds and exploding shells

while screaming for reinforcements, tearing the Confederates apart and slowing down their advance. And I should point out here, while this is very cool to see your general just like freewheeling a cannon. Once you do that, you kind of lose all command and control of your regiment because you're too busy firing a cannon.

It's kind of not your job as a general. At any point that the general is aiming the artillery, he better be the last guy alive or... I don't know any other reason he should be doing that. Maybe run, run at that point. I would just say, yeah, it's probably not a good idea. It's probably not a good sign. All things considered, if you're general,

if the senior ranking person in that large of an element is like, it's my turn to start hipfiring the cannon. you're not doing great. I mean, dudes rock, but also sometimes dudes should not be rocking. Dudes should be commanding. Dudes be commanding. It's like, you're seeing this happen, you're like, oh, damn, I guess we're in one of those famous last stands that people look at as sort of like, well, he went down firing.

You're like, shit. I didn't know we were all going down with him. Then for some reason, Terrell ordered his regiment to counterattack down the hills. Now, this normally wouldn't be that much of a problem. In fact, it's kind of fine. But his regiment was brand new. They had never seen combat before. And while they were following orders,

you generally don't want to take a group of green conscripts and chuck them down a hill to get in hand-to-hand combat with veterans of the Battle of Shiloh. Virginal conscript gets obliterated on Knob Hill. And credit where credit is due to these very terrified conscripts, they do charge down the hill. But they get a whiff of a Confederate. volley and immediately turned back around, which, you know what, no shade on that. I'd do the same

fucking thing. I fought a different war. If you make me stand in the line and slug it out with muskets, I am beaten fucking feet. I'm getting the fuck out of there. You're going to have to hang me. The Confederates then counterattack themselves, climbing up the hill. And then Terrell orders another attack, despite the fact his regiment had barely climbed up the hill from the last what they ran away from. At this, his regiment collapsed. His division commander, General James Jackson, charged in on horseback to try to save him, only to get shot dead, and Terrell had to retreat while dragging a cannon behind him. My emotional support cannon, I can't leave it behind. He's like a lot of artillerymen that I've met, or tankers for that matter, weirdly attached

to their chosen implement of war. Like, I can't fully describe how weird tankers are towards their tanks, but if you could physically drag it away rather than leave it behind when it was broken, they'd probably try to do it. Because you give it names, you live inside of it. Yeah. Whereas for us, it's like, well, for me, you know, you don't use the same parachute. I don't even know what parachute is. You just hope it's been inspected correctly and it works. And for my rifle, I used to have my serial number from when I was deployed memorized, but it was almost 20 years ago. I have fucking remembered. I'm going to shit. I'm not emotionally attached to it. I never gave a shit about my rifle, my tank on the other hand.

Yeah. Oh yeah. You were having like an embryonic experience inside the tank as like machine mother will protect me. Exactly. Seeing the advantage, the Confederates pressed their attack towards the next hill, but now it was their turn to send an entirely brand new regiment and feed them into the mouths of muskets and cannons. They were also blown to pieces and ran. But the confederates still had the advantage though. And Bragg began shoving as many men as he could into the breach to keep it up. But this is when command, control, and just about everything else

breaks down entirely. A Confederate brigade under the command of General Bushrod Johnson, that's just a porn name. Come on. I'm sorry. Bushrod Johnson. Bushrod Johnson. That is a boogie night's ass porn name. That's not creative. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's not a good porn name. It's not like

David Steele or whatever. Bushrod Johnson is the the antagonist in the first Brocklanders film, yeah, correct. He's given orders to march wide left in order to avoid union cannon fire and attack Bottom Farm, which we already referenced. But somehow, one of his regiments doesn't get these orders and just keeps marching straight ahead.

Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the Confederate regiments had gotten the orders and were marching correctly, got hit with their own artillery because the gunners had mistaken them for Union soldiers. Fuck sake. Which isn't that surprising when you think of just how much gunpowder smoke would be in the air at this point. Eventually, Johnson is able to get most of his brigade together, though he still had no idea where that one regiment win and launched his attack. The Unionmen station at the farm fought bitterly. Sometimes the two sides would smash into one another, stabbing, beating, and killing one another with whatever they had on hand.

And if that wasn't gruesome enough, a Confederate cannon managed to hit the nearby barn directly. ignite something inside, probably a lantern in some hay if I was going to make a bet, and set the whole thing on fire, which is unfortunate because the Union forces were using it as a field hospital, and everyone burned alive. Meanwhile, Buell did nothing. He had still yet to give a single order or know that he was involved in a battle that was about to see his entire left flint collapse. I'm not taking anything away from him for just how bad at your job you have to be to do this. But his ignorance was at least partially thanks to the environment. Where he was headquartered, fell into what was known as an acoustic pillow, creating a shadow effect owing to the rolling hills of the area.

The environment effectively acted like soundproof foam. So despite thousands of men all shooting at one another, Buell only two miles away had heard none of it. He's busy building a phonograph to listen to 19th century Led Zeppelin on. vinyl. He's like, it's absolutely perfectly isolated. And what's even weirder is nobody had told him the true severity of the battle, mostly because at this point, they're literally struggling to hold on. Like, they don't have time to be sending messages back and forth. So you might be wondering, what was he doing if he wasn't commanding his army? Well, he had a nice dinner. He read a book. He took a little nap while thousands of his men were all fighting for their lives two miles away.

Mental health inspo. Yeah. Sometimes you just got to, I don't have the bandwidth to command this army right now. This went on for two hours until someone finally told him that his army was fighting.

But still, he doubted the message, figuring that if such a battle was taking place, he would have heard something. Instead, he just kept planning his attack for the next morning. He effectively abandoned his entire army to their fate.

The Confederates had dragged artillery up into the hills that overlicked the Union left flank and began to bomb the piss out of them, killing, amongst other people, General Terrell, who I assume died with his artillery piece still wrapped in his arms. This was followed by an attack against the next Union Hill under the command of General John Starkweather, whose soldiers fought again, like muskets, cannons, and then boiling down to clubs, biting each other, braining each other with rocks. And they did fight the Confederates back, but only after retreating for over a mile in the attempt. But they did put up such a fight that the Confederates were forced to stop until they got

reinforcements. Those reinforcements came under the command of General Patrick Claiborne, native of County Cork, Ireland. Yep. He immigrated to the United States after failing the entrance exam to get into Trinity College. Once again, it all comes back to exams. He then joined the Confederate Army as a private and worked his way up to being a general in about a year and a half because that's what you can do with the standards are so low and you're in a

slaver's revolt. Can you imagine if you were like, you know, Confederate soldier Al-Fuck and he was in charge of you and you were trying to understand his accent when he got mad, started yelling. I've been in the army for a year. How come he's a general? I don't even have shoes. Claiborne's men attacked McCook, slowly beating the union back as the defenders finally began to run out of ammo. Because that's the other downside to, you know, Buell just kind of sit this whole thing out. He's not pushing supplies forward either. But through Gilbert's orders and many commanders just deciding to act on their own, Union forces just kept flooding in to plug the gaps and slowed the gradual collapse of their line. The Confederates are doing pretty much the same.

Grabbing any unit they could find, giving them orders as simple as, quite literally, quote, go where the fighting is hottest, and then just throwing them into the breach. When the sun went down, confused soldiers just began shooting at every which direction. Each one screaming at the other to stop firing because they're friendly. And that's the other thing is everyone sounds exactly the same as well. So you can't really tell from accents or what direction they're coming from because the lines are all meshed into one another at this point. And sometimes these guys actually were friendly and sometimes they weren't.

Leonidas Polk in an infamous case rode through union lines to get to one of his units had been cut off by simply demanding union soldiers not shoot at him in his best commander voice. And Union soldiers just saw a guy riding by a horseback with a bunch of stars on his shoulders. And that's good enough. Like, look, I've been a private before. If you put on a general's uniform and look, you know, the right

age just told me to do something, I'd fucking do it. What happens if I'm wrong in this situation? Yeah, I mean, like, to the shoeless man, any booted man is king. So. I bet that guy shit's so solid. He doesn't even have to wipe.

His throat is completely unpeated. Pave. Things got so confused that Polk wouldn't let anyone else to try to advance, while Bragg finally decided that he might actually be fighting the entire army of the Ohio. So with McCook's core on its last legs, Bragg ordered his men to pull back. Buell still refused to accept any of this was taking place. More letters had shown up and more messages telling him about the severity of the battle, but he never took part.

It meant that he had effectively captured Perryville without knowing he was ever tetanour. in command of the battle for it. He finally accepted that, you know what? I may have been wrong about this whole battle thing when he rode by all the dead bodies the next morning. Just like pulling on his collar like, all right, all right, you were right, I was wrong. What's the big deal?

There's only, oh, let me, let me check this. 850 dead on our side and 2,851 wounded. Ah, the Confederates lost 510 dead and a slightly less than the Union wounded. Comparatively, for the amount of men actually committed to the battle, 22,000 men for the Union, and 16,000 men for the Confederates, this is a shockingly bloody battle that was effectively in accident and fought over a half-dry creek

and would become the largest battle ever fought in Kentucky, period. Bragg lost 20% of his fighting force, and the invasion of Kentucky was not able to be continued. He was only united with the another Confederate army that was taking part in the invasion as they both retreated. Virtually every commander that served in the Army of Mississippi demanded that Bragg be fired for what happened. Instead, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered him to personally account for what happened. Bragg, of course, blamed everyone but himself. And Bragg, one of Davis's political allies, was allowed to keep his job.

But Buell wouldn't be so lucky. Lincoln already hated him and he had already been fired. So after that there was really no saving him. And his subordinates point out that it might be the first time in American military history that a commander refused to command a battle that he was actually already in. He was doomed. He was fired in October. Neither side really won this battle.

And nobody really seems to understand how it happened the way that it did. Because in effect, nobody was ever really in command of it. Instead, it was a battle fought piecemeal, largely by subordinates, and mostly just people deciding to march towards the sounds of gunfire. Both sides could claim a technical victory here. The Confederates had pushed the union back by a mile while being outnumbered and weren't driven from the field. They withdrew in orderly fashion.

While the union held, it didn't press a counterattack and destroy Bragg entirely because Buell didn't want to. In closing, this is kind of like a fist fight in a bar, where two men are squaring up, daring the other guys. to hit him until finally one of those guys' friends runs up and tries to sucker punch a guy, misses, hits an innocent bystander,

and then you all get arrested. The end. In a way, it's the most Fort Knox battle that's ever been fought. Yeah, I mean, like, this battle is largely called, like, inconclusive. Obviously, the South couldn't continue their invasion of

Kentucky, but that had largely more to do with a loss of confidence with Bragg. There was still another Confederate Army, They weren't doing great either But yeah The Union won for sure But Brax and Bragg

And tens of thousands Of his soldiers Were able to just march back south Because Buell's a fucking idiot The Civil War is full of episodes like that A lot of wars are But definitely the early stages Of the Civil War

When nobody really knew What they were doing quite yet Like this battle is bloody The Battle of Shiloh's gruesome That happens before this But for what's coming It's kind of a drop in the bucket These guys haven't really figured out these large maneuvers, especially these commanders who had never done it before.

And apparently really didn't want to do it in the first place. Yeah, that's the only reason I can respect Buell is just like quietly quitting the military in the middle of a battle. Yeah, he's got a 19th century diptee candle that he's burning. He's got a specific kind of ditch weed that makes you very relaxed. Oh, man, I have a dipteeat candle in my apartment. He's got the 19th century's first CBD blunt. he's very, very relaxed. Yeah, it's helping him recover from the horse fall.

So, fellas, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, support the show on Patreon. Your donations make the show possible. It lets us be completely and totally independent, never take ads. So you're never going to hear us read something about like, I don't know, an AI generated app to help you manage your dog food better or fucking whatever. I don't know ads people are reading anymore. Here I petly, we make sure you don't get a fat dog. And you'll never hear us read any bullshit like that.

And your support helps us make that possible and keep that going. And we're never going to sell out or anything like that. And once you support us on Patreon, you'll have access to our Discord. And you can ask us a question from the Legion either on Patreon or in the Discord and we'll answer on the show. Today's question is, what is your favorite food and or remedy you use to recover from a hangover? this is an apt question seeing how we just got done with our live show in cork and we all drank far far too much.

I didn't. What are you talking about? I barely had anything. I wasn't hung over at all. I just had the shits and that predated the cork show because I'm a Civil War general. Me and Joe went to a Is Cafe, which is a Palestinian restaurant in Cork. It was lovely. The food's really good on Sunday. Joe, you probably knows this. I was sweating bullets the entire time. I was disgusting as well My go-to Okay, so I've like

Remedy is Elka-Seltzer and Electrolites Favorite food while hungover Is a garbage plate I know what it is Yeah Tom I don't think you're familiar With the garbage plate

I know I know what it is Yeah Did it make it over the sea now I've just seen pictures of it Oh okay Yeah I think it originates In New York State Yeah it's like

I think it's Rochester or Buffalo I can't remember which Yeah And I had to introduce to me From someone from one of those places when I was stationed in Texas. It's just a pile of goddamn food. It's greasy.

It's got meat. It's got like mac salad, coleslaw, home fries, hamburger patties. It's got fucking everything on it. It hits the spot perfectly. What about you guys? To be honest with you, well, there are a couple of things. I have found that it's probably better for me to just not drink that much anymore because even when the physical hangover goes away, the psychological hangover now lasts a lot

longer. Oh, don't get me wrong. That's also my answer. But, you know, win in court. Well, so, you know, obviously, I was stationed in Korea and then I lived there as a civilian for a little while. And so I'm very used to feeling horrible the next morning after going out and having way too much beer and soju and meat and spicy food and cigarettes. And I would say nowadays, the best thing you do is just sort of accept that you're probably going to feel like shit. Wait until at least 12 hours is a lap since you were drinking to kind of get a sense of where you're at and probably get some ibuprofen in you definitely electrolytes like Gatorade, whatever, you know, sports drink stuff to rehydrate yourself. Anthony Bourdain said that his cure was spicy food, a Coca-Cola with

sugar in it and a joint. I will say that if you smoke weed when you have a hangover, it can't potentially make you feel better, but that might not be an option given whatever day of the week it is. I will say, though, one time I had pretty bad hangover from being out in Korea. And You know, soju is like fucking rot gut alcohol. It's just like watery vodka, basically. But it is not good quality. Like the first time I had soju, I like got a hangover like two hours into it. And I hadn't even had that much because it's just not very good quality.

It's like Vladimir is horrible. It's like fucking CVS brand vodka level of like actual alcohol quality. I think the only hangover I had that was worse than soju was like a wine hangover. Yeah, I one time drank Lao, which is like who shamed and Laos that a dude brought back in a fucking like fuel. can. And that definitely gave me a worse hangover. But other than that, I had, if you're familiar with Korean food, there's a very, very sweet, very sticky, like rice gluten cookie called Jaguar. I had in a train station randomly feeling like I was going to die from Hangover.

And I had Yagua and Pakari sweat, the Japanese sports drink. And I had some ibuprofen with me. And so I had, I took the ibuprofen with those two items. And I had an hour and a half sole metro ride back to Tong Dujan. Within 30 minutes, I felt completely normal. I had a productive day. It was like a miracle cure. And I don't know if it was just that one time, but something about like the ultra-dense,

sugary rice gluten and then also getting electrolytes. And I had taken a, you know, a non-steroid anti-inflammatory. It just worked. Also, I was like 29. It might not work now. No, I don't think anything works now. Just saying.

Yeah. Unfortunately, you get to our age, you basically feel hungover when you wake up after not having drank a thing because you're just old. So when you are actually hungover, then it's much worse. But yeah. where you go, Tom?

Yeah, I mean, as the resident hungover person on this show, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Number one is like not to oversleep. So like if you have like enough sleep in you like seven hours or whatever, is to get out of bed and actually get out of the house because almost like exposure therapy, I find going to Sainsbury's at 11 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, just like it makes you feel worse in the immediate sense but when you get back home you feel better because it's like

oh I've actually like done something in terms of like things you can eat I know I had to explain what Lucasaid was to you Joe the other night it's just like a sugary glucose drink yeah it's it's Gatorade but it's more sugary the Lucasade sports stuff's pretty good yeah I would say preemptive thing is to not like get a kebab or whatever on the way home

because that will make you feel so much worse in the morning. There is no good food you want to eat that's being served when you leave the bar. That shit is going to mix with the alcohol and give you turbo nausea in the next morning, for sure. Do not eat on your way home.

I would say, like, if you can eat something that's, like, relatively, like, clean. Like, I really like avocado toast with a poached egg and some chili flakes and, like, a little bit of saracha. So it's like a little bit of heat, some good carbs, fats, and a little bit of protein. And that you,

Usually, I'm, a lot of people are on the axes of like, their hangovers get worse as the day goes on, whereas I'm the opposite. It's like, I'll hit like 1pm and I'm like, oh, I'm okay now. I find that it's 12 hours from when I quit drinking is typically like the absolute peak of it and then it lessens. So if I quit drinking at 10 p.m., then it's 10 a.m. If I quit drinking at 4 a.m., it's 4 p.m. Which if you have to work the next day sucks, but that's life. I have a diabolical remedy that I always. also do, which is I go running. Yeah. It is awful. It's horrible. I don't recommend it, but by the time you finish, you will feel better. Yeah, it does make you feel better unless you shit yourself. That's the unspoken rule about running.

Always go shit first before you run. Otherwise, you're playing Russian roulette. I would also just say, too, like, if you can't, like, I tried it. I've had the worst hangars I ever had been ones where I was hungry when I started drinking. Like, if you can just get something in your stomach, Christ's sakes. Like, that'll help you so much more. But honestly, as you guys just said, instead of eating.

kebabs on the way home. If you can get a white sandwich bread and just have something like that, like, that may not be appetizing, but that's going to make you feel better in the morning if you had that to sate the hunger than if you ate something mega greasy and fatty and just something that's going to like sit heavy in your stomach to begin with. Or the unspoken truth here. Just don't drink. Yeah, don't drink. Anyway, that's a podcast. Fellas, you host other podcasts. I've already plugged mine. What's yours? Listen to the trash future. Listen to Kill Chainspaughn's Bond. Listen to my band's

second homes. Our debut album is available everywhere on streaming as well as on band camp. Benetzkin, show about the history of everything told to the history of tattoos, blood work, a show about the economy of violence and tangible vibe shift. A podcast of how everyone has a time in their life when everything changed. Everyone, thank you so much for listening to us here today. Thank you to those who support the show or those are considering it. Leave us a review and wherever it is you listen to a podcast that helps us immensely, especially when it comes to scheduling future live shows. So the more, you know, brackets, good reviews you give us, the easier it is to find venues.

So do that or don't. It's your time. Do whatever the hell you want. Nate, Tom, thank you so much for joining me today. And until next time. Take time for yourself. Fuck commanding the battle. Who cares?

Like that diptee candle. Enjoy yourself. Take a bath. That's right. Just take some U time away from your command staff. And we'll talk to you next time.