Confederate Capital: Three Months on the Barren River

In the autumn of eighteen sixty-one, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston moved his forces into Bowling Green and established his headquarters here. The city became the anchor of a Confederate defensive line stretching more than three hundred miles, from the Mississippi River in the west to the Cumberland Gap in the east. Johnston had roughly forty-five thousand troops spread across that line, which was too thin to hold if seriously pressed.

Bowling Green, on the vital Louisville and Nashville Railroad, was the hinge point. The provisional Confederate government of Kentucky, formed by Kentucky Confederates at a convention in Russellville, met in November of eighteen sixty-one and formally designated Bowling Green the capital of Confederate Kentucky. George W.

Johnson was named provisional governor. The arrangement allowed the Confederacy to claim Kentucky as a Confederate state and to add a star to the Confederate battle flag, even though the legitimate Kentucky legislature had voted to remain neutral and then tilted toward the Union. The Confederate capital lasted barely three months.

In February of eighteen sixty-two, Union General Ulysses Grant's forces captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River in rapid succession. Johnston's entire defensive line collapsed. Confederate General William J.

Hardee commanded the forces in Bowling Green, and as the Union advance made the city untenable, the Confederates evacuated on the fourteenth of February. Before they left, they burned the railroad bridge over the Barren River and destroyed military stores. Provisional Governor Johnson fled south with the retreating army.

He was mortally wounded two months later at the Battle of Shiloh in April of eighteen sixty-two. Union forces entered Bowling Green the following day.