Munfordville: The Bridge Bragg Had to Have

Munfordville, Hart County's seat since eighteen sixteen, guarded the only railroad bridge across the Green River on the Louisville and Nashville line. In September of eighteen sixty-two, Confederate General Braxton Bragg knew that if he could take that bridge, he could sever Union supply lines into Kentucky. He surrounded the Union garrison commanded by Colonel John Wilder, who famously was escorted through Confederate lines to see their strength for himself before deciding whether to surrender.

Satisfied the odds were impossible, Wilder surrendered his four thousand men on September seventeenth after a three-day siege. Bragg's army held the crossing briefly before pressing deeper into Kentucky, a campaign that ultimately failed at Perryville. The bridge Bragg fought for is long gone, but the battlefield here is preserved along the Green River.