Twenty -seventh Infantry. -- Col., Charles D. Pennebaker,
Lieut.- Col. John H. Ward; Majs., John Carlisle, Samuel J.
Coyne, Alexander Magruder.
About Sept. 20, 1861, Maj. Ward opened camp for recruits at
Greensburg, within 24 miles of Gen. Buckner's Confederate
forces at Munfordville, with whom he had many encounters,
losing men in killed, wounded and prisoners before he had a
regimental organization and often before the company to which
the men were attached had been organized.
Many of the recruits came from inside the Confederate lines,
or very near to them, and had to fight on the way to camp.
Under these difficulties, with the name of Gen. Ward to
assist, Lieut.-Col. Ward and Maj. Carlisle recruited from the
counties of Casey, Green Taylor, Hart and Nelson, five
companies; Col. Pennebaker, with the aid of Col. Alfred Allen
and Larkin Proctor, recruited five other companies in Hardin,
Grayson, Breckinridge and Meade counties, a few men were sent
from about Covington, some of them coming from Madisonville
Ohio.
The regiment was with Gen. Nelson's division when it occupied
Corinth; thence moved to Iuka and Rienzi, Miss., thence to
Tuscumbia and Florence and Athens, Ala., and was on the march
of Buell's army to Louisville, Ky., in the summer of 1862. It
was at the battle of Perryville with Gen. Crittenden's corps,
but was only engaged in skirmishing as the fight was to its
left. After Bragg's retreat it returned with Buell to the
south via Glasgow, Ky., and Gallatin, Tenn., and with the army
to Stone's River.
It was sent from there back to Munfordville, Ky., to recruit
and was engaged in fights about that place. In Sept. 1863, it
was mounted and sent to join Burnside in East Tennessee. In
October it joined the cavalry forces and other mounted
infantry in an attack on Philadelphia, but found there a
strong force of infantry and artillery upon which it could
make no impression.
In the fight at Leiper's ferry the regiment suffered severely.
During the siege of Knoxville, with other troops and
artillery, it sustained a charge the same morning that the
Confederates met with the famous defeat at Fort Sanders. At
Bean's station the regiment was fiercely engaged after which
it marched on foot to Cumberland Gap and then into Lee County,
Va., where it camped for a time, when it was ordered to Mt.
Sterling, Ky., to be remounted.
The regiment joined the army at Pumpkin Vine creek, GA, and
was with it in its almost continued battle from there until
the fall of Atlanta, being in Strickland's brigade, Hascall's
division, 23rd corps. After the fall of Atlanta, as the
regiment had already served over three years, it was sent back
to Owensboro, Ky., to drive out the guerrillas in that part of
the state and reduce the country to order.
The loss of the regiment in the Atlanta campaign was 66 in
killed and wounded.
Source: The Union Army, vol. 4, p. 336