18621776 Club
Union line collapses at Richmond; Kirby Smith's men take 4,300 prisoners
Nelson's routed troops make a last stand in a cemetery outside town before that too gives way.
By late August 1862, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith was pushing into Kentucky, hoping to help install a friendly government and pull the border state into the war on the South's side. On August 30, near Richmond, Confederate forces under Edmund Kirby Smith struck the Union lines: Brigadier General Patrick Cleburne's men hit Zion Church while Brigadier General Thomas Churchill's men turned the Union right until the whole position broke. Union major general William "Bull" Nelson tried to rally survivors in a cemetery outside town, but the line gave way there too. Confederates took more than 4,300 Union prisoners in one of the most lopsided defeats of the war…
