The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 83, July 1979 - April, 1980 Page: 7
464 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Confederate Cavalry in the West
barrels of my gun at a croud [sic] of yankeys in a lane at about thirty yards
distance. I stopped my horse and took deliberate aim at the bunch and I
think I either killed or wounded some.13
Dunnie's next action came at Perryville, the largest single engagement
in the Kentucky campaign. In this battle outnumbered Confederate
forces repulsed a Union attack and drove numerically stronger Union
troops back more than a mile. "I saw more dead men in an hour than I
ever saw in my life before," young Affleck wrote his parents. "About
two-thirds of them were yankeys. They were lieing [sic] in every posi-
tion, some shot in too [sic] by cannon balls, some with their head and
legs shot off; they were killed in every position." The sight of so many
dead and wounded moved the young cavalryman. "It made me sick
when I first wint [sic] in, but I got used to it very soon, the yankeys
were so thick in some places I could hardly keep from rideing [sic] over
them." 14
Although Perryville was a Confederate tactical victory, the Confed-
erate commander Braxton Bragg chose to withdraw south away from
the numerically superior forces commanded by Don Carlos Buell. The
next major action for the Rangers was in the blood bath at Murfrees-
boro, Tennessee, where on two days of bitter fighting Confederate and
Union forces fought each other to a standstill with combined losses of
over 17,000 killed and wounded. Of the fighting that occurred on De-
cember 31, when Bragg's forces drove Union troops under William
Rosecrans back, young Affleck wrote, "the Rangers suffered more in this
fight than they ever have yet, having had some fifteen or twenty killed
and a great number wounded." Dunnie himself captured a sutler's
wagon but was forced to abandon it when Union cavalry launched a
counterattack. "The Yankeys shot at me thin [sic] every jump my horse
made," Dunnie reported to his parents, "but none of them touched me
or my horse although one went through my pants." The loss of the
wagon disappointed him; it was "loaded with everything nice belong-
ing to a sutlers store, such as clothing, sweet meats, tobaco [sic], segars
[sic], boots, hats."5
There was little fighting on January 1, but on the next day Bragg re-
opened the attack against Rosecrans's line. "Our boys charged a battery
13Affleck to Mr. & Mrs. Affleck, Nov. 1, 1862, Affleck Letters.
14Ibid. For the details of the Perryville campaign see Official Records, Ser. I, Vol. XVI,
Pt. 1, pp. 1021-1134. See also Ralph A. Wooster "Confederate Success at Perryville," The
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, LIX (Oct., 1961), 318-323.
1 Affleck to Mr. & Mrs. Affleck, Jan. 1, 1863, Affleck Letters.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 83, July 1979 - April, 1980, periodical, 1979/1980; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101207/m1/27/: accessed June 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.