"Oh, Whiskey is a monster,
It ruins both great and small;
But in Kirby Smith's army,
Headquarters gets it all.
They drink it when there's danger,
Although it does seem hard,
But if a Private touches it,
They put him under guard.

Oh, how do you like this army,
This brass-mounted army;
This high-falutin'army,
Where eagle buttons rule?"

I tend to take a lot of the History Channel's offerings with a strong dose of salt. After all, when they get down to running "The History of Chainsaws" they're getting a little hard-up for quality programming.

The maneuvers and mishaps of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign had much more to do with the individual idiosyncrasies of those paragons of military science, Don Carlos Buell and Braxton V. Bragg than it did with the nearness of all those sources of Kentucky corn squeezin's. The initial phases of the battle of Perryville, the climactic encounter, was fought more over control over the meagre water sources in Doctor's Creek, Bull Run, and the Chaplin River than the distilleries.

William Noe recently (early October) published an excellent account of the Kentucky adventures of Buell and Bragg in his new book, "Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle." An excellent read and probably the definitive book on this time period if you're a fan of the Army of Tennessee...

your pard,

Tom